Aurium Resources targets iron direct shipping ore potential at Peak Hill

Aurium Resources (ASX: AGU) continues to move the Peak Hill Iron Project joint venture in the mid-west region of Western Australia forward quickly, and has just finished a dozen hole program at the Telecom Hill prospect.

Where the story gets very interesting for Aurium is that Telecom Hill has a DSO exploration target of 10 to 55 million tonnes at 55% to 58% iron.

Another plus at the project is that the potential for a resource upgrade remains very high, considering that the 850 million tonnes at 27.3% iron Inferred JORC Resource is defined from just 4 kilometres of a 10 kilometre strike length.

Terry Quinn, managing director at Aurium, commented on the achievement.

“This program is the first significant step of a focused strategy to add to the Peak Hill Iron Project base by identifying a DSO source that could lead to early cashflow for the Peak Hill project.

“Another important aspect of this drill will be metallurgical testing of core samples from the magnetite Banded Iron Formation at Telecom Hill West."

The significance of this data is that it will provide details of the nature of the magnetite deposit, and represents another major milestone for the development of Peak Hill.

Peak Hill has an exploration target of 3.5 to 5 billion tonnes at 25% to 35% iron covering an extensive 2500 square kilometres, and is prospective for magnetite and hematite iron ore - located about 450 kilometres north east of Geraldton.

Aurium has a 30% stake, with Padbury Mining (ASX: PDY) a 70% stake.


The drilling program

The drilling has been conducted to a depth ranging from 60 to 100 metres, with pre-collaring having commenced for diamond drilling, with the next step metallurgical testing to be undertaken on drill core.

Two initial holes targeting a magnetite Banded Iron Formation, were drilled to about 300 metres.

The next phase of work starts this week at Telecom Hill West to pre-collar for diamond drilling, which maximises cost savings by using the diamond rig for depths where only magnetite is present. Under this process, pre-collaring will vary from 50 to 100 metres, before the diamond drill is utilised.

A sample will be collected and dispatched to China for further testing by interested investors.


Mt Padbury DSO drilling

Additional DSO drilling will commence at the company’s Mt Padbury tenement once its Program of Work approval is received from the Department of Mines and Petroleum.

The recently completed baseline flora and fauna survey undertaken as part of this approval process has been submitted to the Departments of the Environment and Conservation and Mines and Petroleum.

Originally published at: http://www.proactiveinvestors.com.au/companies/news/21477/aurium-resources-targets-iron-direct-shipping-ore-potential-at-peak-hill-21477.html