High-purity silica sand mass emerging for Allup in WA

Boots on ground at Allup Silica’s 100 per cent owned Cabbage Spot project has mapped out an extensive high-purity silica sand system within easy trucking distance to the Wyndham Port on Western Australia’s Kimberley coast.

Allup’s modus operandi is simple – projects, purity, ports - and its Cabbage Spot project fits the bill on all fronts.

Ticking the box on purity, the company completed a surface grab sampling program at Cabbage Spot in 2021 collecting 10 samples over the prospective sand mass that returned a plethora of high-purity results peaking at 99.4 per cent silica. Encouragingly, the samples also contained low contaminants.

The deep port of Wyndham is also ideally located for Allup’s operations, situated a mere 95km from the company’s Cabbage Spot project. Allup has kicked off discussions with operators Cambridge Gulf Limited (CGL) on the possibility of loading 30,000 to 50,000-tonne ships at the facility destined for key markets in the Asia-Pacific region. Management says the road infrastructure to the port is excellent and notably the use of 4-trailer road trains is permissible.

In its latest field campaign, the company collected a further 20 surface samples along a 2km traverse designed to help pinpoint future priority drill targets. The samples have been sent to North Australian Laboratories in Pine Creek for assaying. Battery Limits metallurgical consultants will take stock of the final results for the preparation of an independent metallurgical report.

Allup Silica managing director Andrew Haythorpe said: “The company is excited by the potential at the Cabbage Spot Project, and whilst in its early stages, the project’s potential is promising and further investment is warranted. We hope that after the metallurgical results are received, we will be in a position to ‘push the go-button’ on the heritage survey and maiden drill program. We’re already back in the field now.”

The company is looking to follow up its latest field campaign with a micro-seismic survey to determine the base of the sand masses in conjunction with a new high-resolution survey to confirm the elevations. Results from both surveys will enable the company to determine how much of the prospective sand mass lies within its tenure.

High-purity silica sand is a specialised form of sand composed of quartz, or silicon dioxide, with very low levels of impurities, specifically iron. Making its way onto Australia’s Critical Minerals list in 2022, high-purity silica is an essential raw material in glass manufacturing, building construction, ceramics and oil and gas exploration, with increasing demand in the electronic renewable energy sectors driven by its use in semiconductors and solar panels.

Online research agent Maximize Market Research valued the global market for high-purity silica sand at US$18.65 billion (AU$29.7 billion) in 2021. It also forecasts demand to grow at a combined annual growth rate of 6.1 per cent from 2023 to 2030 to an estimated value of US$30 billion (AU$47.4 billion). The Asia-Pacific region accounts for more than 48 per cent of the overall market share in terms of volume and revenue owing largely to rising construction operations in India, China and Indonesia.

With tier-one infrastructure on hand and located conveniently close to one of Australia’s most northern ports, the extensive sand mass emerging at Allup Silica’s Cabbage Spot project looks to be ideally placed to service the growing demand for high-grade silica on the edge of the Asia-Pacific rim.

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