The Project area is located within the Archaean-aged Jack Hills Greenstone Belt approximately 380km north east of Geraldton in the mid west region of WA.
Jack Hills has an initial JORC compliant Inferred Mineral Resource of 15.4Mt at an average grade of 59.7% Fe, using a cut off grade of 50% Fe. The Inferred Mineral Resource estimate relates to mineralised lenses at the Matthew Ridge, Dead Goat Hill and Taylor Range Prospect hematite deposits encompassing exploration tenure held by Midwest in the Jack Hills Project area. The estimate has delineated eight separate Resource areas.
Metallurgical testing of drill core samples of Beneficiable Feed Ore (BFO) from the Matthew Ridge Prospect has revealed high quality magnetic concentrates can be produced at relatively coarse grind sizes, with low contaminant contents and high mass recoveries of between 38% - 42%, and that it can be upgraded to direct reduction grade or blast furnace grade magnetite products.
The results show that commercial products could potentially be produced from the lesser quality BFO type materials using conventional mineral processing technology.
There is considerable scope to increase the Resource base and overall confidence of the classification through infill, extensional and deeper drilling. A significant drilling programme has been budgeted for the Jack Hills Project in 2008, including deeper drilling, which will be used to complete an economic assessment of the viability of a DSO project at Jack Hills.
A Scoping Study has commenced on the viability of the Jack Hills Mineral Resource and is expected to be completed by mid 2008. |
