Empire Metals (AIM:EEE) is set to conduct engineering studies, as well as look at capital and operating costs of building a plant at the Pitfield Titanium Project in Western Australia.
Speaking to Mining.com.au, Managing Director Shaun Bunn says the company has created an “avalanche of activity”, as it awaits to confirm the metallurgical flowsheet announced in June.
“It’s all about building up the business case and then letting the market know that this is how you can value this project,” Bunn explains.
“The other avalanche of activity would be starting environmental impact assessments.”
Empire Metals has environmental and engineering teams in place and intends to get more mining people involved also.
“The company is growing, we’re resourcing up and spending more money — but we’re ready for it,” Bunn tells this news service.
In conjunction with engineering studies, Empire Metals intends to conduct an updated resource estimate in Q3 2026.
Billions of potential
In October 2025, Empire Metals delivered Pitfield’s maiden mineral resource estimate (MRE). The resource contains 2.2 billion tonnes (Bt) @ 5.1% titanium dioxide (TiO₂) for 113 million tonnes.
Ahead of conducting a MRE, Pitfield’s exploration target was estimated between 26.4 and 32.2Bt @ 4.5-5.5% TiO₂.
At the time of estimation, Bunn explains the exploration target was only one-fifth of the area that Empire Metals knows is mineralised.
“So, multiply the 30 by five, you have 150 billion tonnes. We’re drilling about 180m, but we’ve also drilled diamond cores down 400m and it’s always in mineralisation,” Bunn notes.
“In our estimates based on those projections, it is quite likely that about a third of the world’s titanium is sitting in that basin at Pitfield.”
Plug-and-play
Pitfield is considered a de-risked development asset with direct access to port, power, and transport. The project sits 320km from Perth and 160km from Geraldton Port.
Bunn says the northwest gas pipeline runs past the project, only 30km to the west.
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“We could tap into natural gas as an energy source, which is low-cost,” he says.
“There’s high-voltage infrastructure already there. There are solar farms and wind farms already there. It really is a plug-and-play type of exercise.”
Although Empire Metals has to build the plant, it does not need to build rail lines.
“There is a railway, we have rail to port — so we can bring in our reagents directly from the port to the site and ship out our products and that is a really important benefit.”
Bunn adds that one difference about Pitfield in comparison to other titanium projects, is there is no ilmenite in the ore.
“98% of the world supplies ilmenite, so that is an important fact that ilmenite’s a difficult mineral to process. It’s refractory. It consumes a lot of acid.”
During the titanium extraction process, ilmenite consumes massive amounts of acid, averaging 2–4 tonnes of concentrated acid per tonne of titanium dioxide produced. This high consumption is driven by the need to solubilise large amounts of iron, forming waste compounds such as ferrous sulphate or ferrous chloride.
Bunn explains that there is no market for iron sulphate. As such, not having ilmenite at Pitfield means the project has lower acid consumption and waste disposal, and reduced costs associated with that.
“We’re mining a weathered cap. It’s free digging. There is no drilling and blasting. It’s the ores at the surface and there is no waste.”
Empire Metals is an explorer and resource developer focused on the commercialisation of the Pitfield Titanium Project in Western Australia.
Write to Aaliyah Rogan at Mining.com.au
Images: Empire Metals
