McLaren Minerals has put a bow on a 6000m air core drilling campaign at its flagship McLaren titanium project in Western Australia’s Eucla Basin, after the company collected critical data to advance its resource confidence and complete in-progress feasibility studies.
The six-week program covered 64 per cent of planned priority locations, with infill drilling enhancing the existing 280-million-tonne resource and step-out holes revealing thick new heavy mineral sands zones to the north and east.
The company says the campaign’s top priority was a six-tonne bulk metallurgical sample, which has been dispatched to IHC Mining’s Queensland laboratory for slimes testing and flowsheet validation.
The test work is expected to refine McLaren’s development strategy for managing residual clay impurities, known as slimes, and support its ongoing prefeasibility study.
The company recently confirmed thick mineralised zones beyond the known deposit and an unexpected groundwater discovery at a 20-metre depth, which could prove crucial for the project’s future infrastructure.
Infill drill testing targeted the project’s 280Mt resource, which grades an impressive 4.8 per cent heavy minerals and includes a higher-grade 79Mt at 6 per cent in the indicated category.
The program’s dense data collection is designed to boost confidence in the project, potentially expand the indicated resource and strengthen its economic foundations.
McLaren believes step-out drilling to the north and east delineated thick sand zones along strike, pointing to a larger-than-expected resource envelope. With sufficient data now in hand, the company has opted to defer its lower-priority southern targets to preserve capital while advancing its resource modelling.
Earlier test work confirmed the deposit’s high-quality output, with ilmenite meeting sulphate-grade standards, rutile grading 95.7 per cent titanium dioxide with just 1.5 per cent iron impurities and negligible uranium and thorium.
Drill samples have been sent to Perth for analysis and the company expects to receive the initial assay results in four to six weeks.
McLaren’s drilling and metallurgical results are expected to be pivotal in shaping the project’s future mine schedule and operational strategy.
With titanium remaining a critical mineral for aerospace, defence and energy applications, the company is well-positioned to capitalise on robust global ilmenite demand and tightening critical mineral supply chains. Both factors will likely return more-than-favourable economic results for McLaren should crucial metallurgical test work provide the company with a simple processing flowsheet.
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By Andrew Todd
