This article is a sponsored feature from Mining.com.au partner PTR Minerals. It is not financial advice. Talk to a registered financial expert before making investment decisions.
PTR Minerals (ASX:PTR) is heading down the development pathway at its Rosewood Titanium Project in South Australia, after recently releasing a maiden mineral resource estimate of exceptionally ‘high grade’.
The project hosts 463 million tonnes (Mt) at 8.8% heavy minerals (HM) which includes the very ‘high-grade’ Rosewood East comprising 294Mt at 9.7% HM containing 28.5Mt of HM.
The 8–10%-plus grade is really the standout, CEO Peter Reid says, with most titanium projects globally hosting between 2–6%.
“We knew there was a lot of titanium present in the basement rock, from previous historical drilling, and when our geologists went out to site, they found a very low escarpment a few kilometres east of these drill holes with dark minerals present in the sands,” Reid says.
“They initially thought it might a bit of iron, but they realised quickly that these were not the basement rocks below — they were sands that had been deposited on top from an ancient inland sea.
“We analysed them with an XRF machine and found they were all titanium minerals, which are quite resistant to erosion, that’s why they were still present in the covering sand.
“When we analysed the high-grade zones, we were getting 20–30% titanium concentrations, so very high grades.”
But what’s really interesting about the discovery, is that it was made without PTR doing any drilling, thanks to some old drill samples from back in 1991 conducted by the South Australian Government trying to promote the region as a frontier exploration area.
“We went and found the old samples in the South Australia Core Library which had never been assayed for titanium, and they never assayed the younger sands overlying the older basement rock, so we re-assayed them and we were getting back 5–15% titanium concentrations,” Reid says.
“We had chased the horizon about 8km east-west, and we could see these old drill holes extending about 6km north-south — so we basically had made a discovery without drilling a hole.”
The company then drilled itself and has so far defined a 40km² area within which sits the very ‘high-grade’ Rosewood East deposit where initial mining is expected to take place.
“Our maiden mineral resource estimate shows it’s a world-class deposit of exceptionally high-grade,” Reid says.
It’s also a shallow resource which typically starts 5–14m from surface, which means there’s a likely favourable ore to waste strip ratio when mining.
Grade far above peers
The project also has some unique characteristics in terms of its composition. Reid notes it’s all titanium minerals — which is a bit different from a typical mineral sands deposit.
“Typically, a mineral sands deposit would run between 2 and 6% heavy minerals and of that maybe 60–80% is valuable heavy minerals,” he says.
“A lot of our deposit is above 10% grade. Rosewood East includes about 200Mt at above 12% heavy minerals which is more than double to three times a typical mineral sands deposit.
“The other unique feature is that 95% of that heavy mineral is valuable — it’s titanium minerals.
“Another difference is that a typical mineral sands deposit might have some ilmenite, which is a lower-grade titanium mineral, a little bit of rutile, which is a high-grade titanium mineral, and then some zircon, which is a high-value mineral.
“More recently, companies have also reported the presence of monazite, a rare earth-bearing mineral, within their mineral assemblages.
“Ours is different because it’s all titanium minerals and dominated by a high-quality leucoxene at about 70% titanium dioxide concentration.
“Titanium tonnes per hectare is a key metric that sets Rosewood apart from its peers.”
That superior grade ranks Rosewood as one of the premier HMS (heavy mineral sands) projects globally, Reid says.
Source: PTR announcement 23.6.2
Titanium deficit and simple processing pathways
Around 88% of titanium globally is used in pigment for paints, paper, and plastics, around 9% is used for metal for aerospace, defence, and even medical implants, and the remaining 3% is used in welding in steel fabrication.
In recent years, however, the market has been depressed thanks to China dumping so much into the market that it undercut Western supplies. But that’s changing thanks to anti-dumping tariffs, among other things.
“The anti-dumping tariffs placed on Chinese exports by a number of countries has made things more competitive,” Reid says.
“Because of its dumping of product into the market, a lot of Western suppliers shut down operations or put things on hold for a while which has started to create a deficit in the market.”
Not to mention, cost pressures and reduced operating rates means that the chloride pigment feedstock mix has shifted away from high-grade slag to chloride ilmenite and leucoxene.
That, along with constrained feedstock supply with mine closures, depleting reserves and falling grades at current mines, supply disruptions, and limited new investment has all impacted new supply.
“While the market has been weak over the past few years, we’re now seeing green shoots. A supply deficit has emerged this year, and we’re starting to see some uplift,” Reid says.
“But even in a bad market I think Rosewood will work because it’s so high grade.”
Plus, the resource also benefits from its coarse grain size which simplifies the processing pathway and means the company can develop a low-cost processing route to produce final products for sale.
“We’re using water and gravity with these spiral separators to produce a heavy mineral concentrate,” Reid says.
“Fine grained ores are hard to separate or capture but when it’s a coarse grain above 100 microns, it’s a lot easier to capture and spiral.
“Ours is a very coarse grade, it’s 250 microns, which makes it much easier in terms of mineral separation.”
Early metallurgical test work has confirmed that Rosewood can produce a HM concentrate where above 94% is composed of a high-quality leucoxene product averaging 66.7% titanium dioxide (TiO₂).
Team stacked with mineral sands expertise
The company’s executive and operational team is full of mineral sands expertise, with the recent appointments of Victor Bruinsma, former principal metallurgist at Iluka Resources (ASX:ILU), and Neil Patten-Williams, a marketing executive with more than 24 years of experience in the industry.
“Victor worked for Iluka for more than 30 years and he was their head metallurgist looking at how best to process the ore, and where the market was going, so that’s just fantastic technical expertise to have to help us refine our processing flowsheet and how we optimise the products that we deliver into market,” Reid says.
“And Neil’s speciality is in finding markets and customers for the ore. We’ve got to the point now where we’re producing the final products, and he’s talking with potential customers for offtake and negotiating prices.”
PTR Minerals’ head of project development Victor Araújo also has 30 years of hands-on experience in building mineral sand mines and developing and running the processing plant operations. And at the board level, Executive Director Robert Sennitt previously ran MDL which developed a very large mineral sands deposit in Senegal.
“With these additions to the team we’ve got every base covered,” Reid says.
Scoping-level studies next on the agenda
Development studies are now underway for the project, with scoping works planned to look at maximising early cash flow by making the Rosewood East deposit a ‘high-grade’ starter pit first.
Not to mention, around 57% of the resource estimate is currently at the indicated level of confidence, with the company planning to raise a significant portion of that to the measure level which further de-risks the mining inventory.
“We’re doing all the key packages of work needed to assess the project commercially so we’re working on a mining schedule, processing schedule, and doing works on transport logistics to get product to market,” Reid says.
The Fraser Institute currently ranks South Australia as one of the top four mining investment jurisdictions globally, and the highest in Australia.
That tier one mining jurisdiction is definitely a bonus, with the project having access to existing transport infrastructure to get product to market easier.
“We’re very lucky because we’re in a remote area of South Australia which is easy in terms of approvals on low-quality pastoral lease land, but we’re only 30km from the main railway network so we can send the ore down to Whyalla, our nearest port, where it could be further processed or put on a ship and sold and exported,” Reid says.
“So, we’re looking at mine-to-market development works, and all those packages are quite advanced which will lead to us producing a scoping report at some stage in the future.”
There’s also significant growth potential at the project, with only limited exploration undertaken on the wider Muckanippie Project area.
Write to Emma Davies at Mining.com.au
Images: Mining.com.au, PTR Minerals & RUI
