Broken Hill Prospecting (ASX:BPL) has increased the size of its Copi North resource by 22% to 14.2 million tonnes, but what’s more important is the fact 77% of the total resource is now in the indicated category (11 million tonnes compared to just7 million tonnes in the previous resource estimate).
The total Heavy Mineral content in the indicated resource is 6.3% whilst the average grade in both the indicated and inferred category is 6.6%. The heavy minerals predominantly contain ilmenite (54.4%) but also contains decent amounts of rutile (almost 11%) and zircon ( just over 11%) which will be more important for the economics of the project as despite the fact the ilmenite grade is 5 times higher than the Rutile or Zircon grade, the low ilmenite price isn’t really working in Broken Hill’s advantage.
The mineralization remains open to the northwest, and the company thinks it can easily add more tonnes along the 2 kilometer strike length. That being said, the exploration target is quite small (just 0.5-1 million tonnes, and the average grade will also be lower whilst the percentage of slimes will increase), and the addition of these tonnes doesn’t necessarily mean the quality of the project will be improved.
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