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A number of these existing mines are
for sampling. Drill pads are also not re-
becoming mature, their grades are quired.
declining and there’s generally been a lack of Metallurgical test work has confirmed
the samples that Sovereign is recovering
“ new rutile-rich deposits to fill this gap. from its ground in Malawi can produce a
“highly favourable and premium” rutile
product, according to Stephens.
of new rutile-rich deposits to fill this gap. get the highest-grade rutile towards the “This has quite high titanium content
If you look at Base’s Kwale project, for in- base of the drilling,” Stephens said. “Most at 96% TiO2, all the critical impurities
stance, that’s been operating for around of those original hand auger holes re- are very low, it’s got an excellent grain
a decade now, however, they are close to main open at depth because we weren’t size distribution which is quite important
exhausting their reserves, they only have able to penetrate past the water table. in rutile products, and it’s comparable to
about 3-4 years of mine life remaining. “We’ve completed about 90 holes alto- other products out there, particularly Si-
Once that operation closes down that is gether. In addition to that, we are testing erra Rutile’s,” he said.
going to create an additional 80,000 tpa some new saprolite-hosted targets so at “These specifications show we have
supply gap into the market.” some stage we’ll have an announcement something suitable for all major end mar-
Sovereign’s search for rutile opportu- on those new targets as well.” kets, being about 60% pigment market,
nities delivered more than the company Stephens also praised the effective- 30% welding and other markets, and
bargained for in its first year focused ness of hand auger drilling which his about 10% into the titanium metal mar-
on the commodity, with not one but two company has been able to undertake ket, which is excellent news. It gives us
discrete styles of rutile mineralisation for less than $US1/m, with a substantial significant confidence going forward with
discovered and multiple high-grade de- amount of core collected by single crews the project that we’ll have a good recov-
posits identified.
Three prospects – Kasiya, Railroad
and Railroad West – were identified in
the same residual saprolite material that
hosts the Malingunde graphite deposit.
More recently, the Bua Channel prospect
was uncovered in sand-hosted fluvial ru-
tile mineralisation.
“We believe we’ve discovered a new
rutile province in Malawi,” Stephens said.
“And with two styles of mineralisation, we
think we have double the opportunity.”
Sovereign initially focused on the Rail-
road and Railroad West prospects where
a mineralised footprint at least 1.6km
long and 500m wide has been defined.
Best grades from hand auger drilling
were 13m @ 1.08% rutile (including 6m
@ 1.25%), 8m @ 0.92% (including 5m @
1.06%), 5m @ 1.16% and 7m @ 0.86%.
However, it is 15km to the north at
Kasiya where Sovereign is licking its lips.
Results from hand auger drilling across
this promising large soil anomaly were
pending at the time of print.
“This prospect looks like it could be
very large,” Stephens said.
There are also high hopes for Bua
Channel which Sovereign suspects could
be at least 50km long. Only 8km of that
sand-filled channel has been drilled to
date with best results from drilling includ-
ing 7m @ 0.81% rutile, 1% ilmenite and
0.11% zircon from surface, 5m @ 0.72%
rutile, 0.9% ilmenite and 0.09% zircon
from 2m and 5m @ 0.64% rutile, 0.9%
ilmenite and 0.1% zircon from surface.
More recent drilling results were also
pending at the time of print, while explo-
ration over the newly awarded licence
stretching 40km to the north-east of that
area was to begin late last month.
“Our previous results showed that you
Rutile mineralisation has been identified in soft-weathered saprolite

aUSTRaLIa’S PaYDIRT MaRCH 2020 Page 59