Cashmere emerges as key Mid West player

Unlisted public company Cashmere Iron is expecting to play a key role in the growing Mid West iron ore province after it today unveiled an iron ore resource of more than 1 billion tonnes.

The milestone was reached at the company's Cashmere Downs iron project, with 92 per cent of the JORC compliant resource in the measured and indicated categories.

Separately, the resource is made up of a total of 822 million tonnes of magnetite grading at 43.7 per cent, using the Davis Tube Recovery (DTR) analysis method, while the total hematite resource is 192mt grading at 32.9 per cent.

The DTR method was not used on the hematite resource.

In comparison, the resource for Gindalbie Metals' Karara iron ore project holds a 1.9 billion tonne resource while Crossland Resources' Jack Hills project contains 3 billion tonnes.

"Given that the JORC resource assessment represents less than 15 per cent of the banded iron formations within the company's tenement areas, we believe this project has the potential to be one of the largest single iron deposits in the Mid West region," chairman David Hendrie said.

"To date the key constraint to the development of the Mid West region has been lack of infrastructure and to justify development, the region needed larger deposits sustaining very long mine lives.

"The company's project at Cashmere Downs may well be the catalyst to underpin the acceleration of development in the Mid West region."

He added that Cashmere Iron was supportive of the $4 billion Oakajee deepwater port and rail project, and was evaluating its rail options.

The company has hired ProMet Engineers to carry out further studies on Cashmere Downs with a scoping study due to be completed in the second quarter of 2010.

A bankable feasibility study is expected to start in the third quarter of 2010.

In order to develop the project, the company said it was currently undertaking steps to list on the Australian stock exchange in the third quarter.