Industrial Minerals (ASX:IND) has supplied several quartz samples from its Pippingarra Quarry Project in Western Australia to potential offtake partners and mineral processing specialists in the US and China, respectively.
The $25 million market capitalisation company says it hopes to determine suitability of the quartz as feedstock for high purity quartz crucible and electronics industry applications.
In the interim, the company has unveiled plans for phase two drilling in late Q1 2024 at Pippingarra after posting first results from reverse circulation (RC) drilling.
Results returned so far include hole INRC002 with 1m @ 1.72% lithium oxide (Li2O) from 30m and 2m @ 1.03% Li2O from 37m.
Assays are pending for the remaining 24 holes, however, wide intervals of pegmatite and quartz have been intersected in drilling, supporting historical data.
Phase one drilling, which comprised 28 RC holes, was completed in December 2023 and was designed to validate historical drill data and test for the presence of stacked flat lying pegmatites and massive quartz zones.
All samples were sent to North Australian Laboratories for lithium and rare earth element suite mineral analysis.
Managing Director Jeff Sweet says: “We are delighted to have received the first batch of assays from our December RC drilling program at Pippingarra after a delay due to laboratory backlogs.
These results demonstrate high-grade lithium outside of the mapped pegmatite, which is very encouraging. Equally, the identification of a clean white quartz zone to the eastern end of Pippingarra provides us with additional potential value for our shareholders.
We eagerly await the remaining assays and the results of the high purity quartz testwork and look forward to providing updates to the market as results are received.”
Industrial Minerals is a critical minerals explorer and developer of high purity silica sand (HPSS) and quartz. The company has HPSS and high purity quartz projects in Western Australia positioned to supply the rapidly expanding solar PV industry.
As of 30 December 2023, the company had $1.439 million cash and cash equivalents at hand, according to its latest quarterly report.
Write to Adam Drought at Mining.com.au
Images: Industrial Minerals
