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InDABA ReVIeW

Serendipitous

Sovereign

overeign Metals Ltd managing direc- Market headwinds forced Sovereign to to get to this point where those deposits
Stor Julian Stephens is oozing with park further technical efforts on its Ma- are clearly there, but we’re now ready to
confidence after a year spent uncovering lingunde graphite project early last year go drill them out to a JORC resource.”
a new rutile province in Malawi and get- until a viable partner prepared to commit Sovereign’s decision to pursue a fu-
ting up to speed on all things related to funding to the next stage of development ture in rutile bucks the common trend of
the rare titanium mineral. emerges. Perhaps rather fortuitously, the companies chasing flavour-of-the-month
Previously focused solely on graphite company had an alternative opportunity commodities when they hit the wall in
in the same country, Sovereign is now right at its doorstep to almost immediate- their current field.
gearing up for what Stephens believes ly begin pursuing. As far as Stephens and the team at
will be a “company-defining year” during “It was a little serendipitous the way we Sovereign are concerned, rutile is a fla-
which it plans to report maiden resource discovered rutile,” Stephens told Paydirt vour-of-the-month commodity. For the
estimates for at least two of the key ru- following a site visit to Malawi last month. past 18 months, rutile – a high-grade ti-
tile prospects identified within its growing “These projects were, in fact, initially tanium mineral produced as a by-product
3,700sq km ground package. pegged for their graphite potential. When or co-product of zircon and ilmenite min-
we were doing some of the ing, and a key ingredient for the pigment
metallurgical work on the industry – has been in structural deficit,
graphite, we noticed some as described by primary producer Iluka
rutile was occurring in the Resources Ltd.
graphite tailings, so we de- Rutile prices have essentially doubled
cided that we would have a to around $US1,200/t over the past four
bit of a go at trying to recover years and forecasters such as TZMI
a rutile product out of those see no reason why that won’t continue.
graphite tailings. Ilmenite prices, meanwhile, are fetch-
“From a bit of rudimentary ing as low as $US200/t due to its lower
metallurgical testing, we were titanium content and pre-processing re-
able to recover a relatively quirements.
significant amount of rutile at Iluka indicated its rutile volumes were
a relatively good grade. That fully sold throughout 2019 and is an-
got us thinking that maybe ticipating continued strong demand this
rutile was more widespread year. The company recently signed a
than just within the graphite sales take-or-pay agreement with Kro-
deposit which we had taken nos Worldwide Inc for 75% of standard-
through to a PFS and pilot grade rutile produced from its Sierra Ru-
plant, so we went back and tile operation in Sierra Leone, effective
looked at a select number of through to December 2022.
our historical hand auger drill- “Rutile really is a scarce commod-
ing holes, but spread over a ity,” Stephens said. “There are very few
very wide area, and discov- rutile-dominant projects in the world,
ered rutile in many areas. probably the only two being Iluka’s Sierra
“We then decided that we Rutile and Base Resources Ltd’s Kwale
would do some exploration for deposit in Kenya.
rutile to see if we could find “A number of these existing mines are
some larger, higher-grade ar- becoming mature, their grades are de-
eas. It’s taken us 1-1.5 years clining and there’s generally been a lack
Julian Stephens

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