Perth-based Altech Chemicals says recent drilling at its wholly-owned Kerrigan deposit, about 20 kilometres south of Hyden in Western Australia, has delivered a “fresh” kaolin resource boosting its current mineral resource estimate by 47 per cent to125 million tonnes at an ISO brightness of 85.2 per cent. According to the company, the program was initially completed to validate earlier drilling and collect samples for test work.
Previous estimates by Geos Mining in 2011 estimated the deposit housed an 85 million tonne resource at an ISO brightness of 85.1 per cent.
Altech says the feedstock required for its high-purity alumina plant in Johor, Malaysia, is adequately fed by its 100 per cent owned Meckering deposit that sits about 135km east of Perth and has an incredible mine life in excess of 250 years.
The Perth-based outfit previously said the plant would be able to produce up to 4500 tonnes of alumina per year, putting Altech among the world's top suppliers of 99.99 per cent, or 4N, alumina.
Altech has to-date finalised two stages of the HPA plant’s construction.
According to the company, the Kerrigan project was created as a separate standalone kaolin property and given its plant in Malaysia is well nourished, it could sell off Kerrigan if an attractive offer landed on its desk.
Geos Mining produced a mineral resource estimate for the Kerrigan deposit in compliance with the JORC standards more than 10 years ago using drilling data collected between 1993 and 1994 by CRA Exploration and Graphite Holdings.
Altech subsequently completed a sequence of 27 air-core drillholes throughout the deposit in 2020 to validate earlier drilling and gather samples for future test work and analysis.
Geos Mining said the higher tonnage can be attributed to the additional drilling data acquired through its recent work and the probe has strengthened its confidence in previous results and corroborated the overall global resource.
Furthermore, the business claims the boosted numbers are also down to the drill campaign’s “modification” of low-grade sections and that a revised geological interpretation shows greater mineralisation continuity.
High-purity alumina is in big demand with the material seen as a crucial element in the creation of synthetic sapphire, which is used to make LED light substrates, semiconductor wafers for the electronics sector and increasingly, a coating for lithium-ion batteries to improve performance and longevity.
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By Matt Birney
