LONDON (ShareCast) - (Sharecast News) - Empire Metals announced the launch of a major drilling campaign at its Pitfield Project in Western Australia on Monday, targeting high-grade titanium zones within the weathered surface deposit.
The AIM-traded firm said the programme would consist of 84 air core drill holes, covering a total of 4,340 metres across the Thomas and Cosgrove Prospects.

It said the drilling aimed to define the extent of titanium mineralisation and extract bulk samples for metallurgical testing.

The priority targets had been identified through previous drilling, with results showing titanium dioxide grades averaging over 6% and reaching as high as 18% in some intervals.

X-ray diffraction analysis confirmed the mineralisation was primarily composed of high-purity anatase and rutile, the board said.

Drilling would follow a 100 metre by 100 metre grid, reaching an average depth of 50 metres, and was expected to yield up to 80 tonnes of bulk metallurgical sample.

The samples would support large-scale metallurgical testing of gravity and flotation processing circuits ahead of a commercial product development trial.

Empire said the data gathered would also contribute to the development of a mineral resource estimate, expediting the project's progression.

"I am pleased to announce the commencement of this very important AC drilling campaign that provides not only the bulk metallurgical samples to enable a significant scale-up of our metallurgical test work programme, but also represents the next phase of defining a mineral resource estimate for Pitfield," said managing director Shaun Bunn.

"The drilling covers an area of around 30 hectares at each of the Thomas and Cosgrove prospects, to a targeted depth of around 50m, this being the average depth of the weathering profile based on previous drilling results from within the area."

Bunn said drilling was expected to be completed in a short period of time, given the "soft, friable nature" of the weathered zone.

"Sub-sampling of the drillholes and geochemical analysis will be the first priority and this will take a few weeks to turnaround.

"Delivery of the bulk metallurgical samples to the processing laboratory will follow and we anticipate moving to a large-scale metallurgical testwork programme around May-June."

At 1517 GMT, shares in Empire Metals were up 1.11% at 9.1p.

Reporting by Josh White for Sharecast.com.

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