Hazelwood is pleased to announce its maiden Mineral Resource for the Mt Mulgine Hill Deposit in the mid-west of Western Australia (HAZ 70%, GBG 30%). The Mulgine Hill Deposit adds another 1.7 million metric tonnes units (17,000 tonnes of contained WO3) to the tungsten resource inventory available to the Company, representing a 67% increase.*
The total JORC Mineral Resource for the Mulgine Hill Deposit, at a cut-off grade of 0.1% WO3 is 8.2 Mt @ 0.21% WO3. Of this, 76% is in the Indicated Resource category (Table 1).
The resource at Mulgine Hill has potential to increase the amount of feedstock available for the ATC Ferrotungsten Project in Vietnam. The ATC Ferrotungsten Project is nearing completion and is scheduled to commence commissioning during the current quarter. Initially the ferrotungsten furnace will operate on feedstock procured from outside sources.
Mulgine Hill is one of two known deposits of tungsten at the Mt Mulgine Project, located in the mid-west region of Western Australia. Significant amounts of historical exploration and evaluation work had been undertaken on the project, including 22,000 metres of tungsten exploration drilling, and the sinking of shafts and underground drives for metallurgical testwork.
The Mulgine Hill Deposit alone had previously been drill tested with 213 diamond core holes for 12,987 metres of drilling. Hazelwood has made use of archived drillcore, re-assaying 10% of the previously assayed intervals for validation purposes. Typical drill spacing at Mulgine Hill is 40m x 40m and the average drillhole depth is only 60 metres.
The deposit is shallow, hosting 95% of the resource within 100 metres of the surface. Confirmatory drilling is proposed to better de-risk the resource. Studies to assess the development of Mulgine Hill as a source of feedstock for ferrotungsten or sodium tungstate production are also planned. The ATC Ferrotungsten Project also has licensing in place for sodium tungstate.
Adding to the exploration upside at Mt Mulgine is the large tungsten and molybdenum target at the Trench Deposit, where historic estimates suggest a very significant scale. Validation work on the Trench Deposit has commenced. The Trench Deposit is polymetallic, and also hosts significant molybdenum mineralisation.
Hazelwood’s 100% Owned Big Hill Tungsten Deposit in the Pilbara already hosts a Proved and Probable Ore Reserve capable of sustaining a 12 year operational life. A pre-feasibility study for Big Hill provided a positive development scenario for that project as a secure source of feedstock for the ATC Ferrotungsten Project. It is proposed to implement Big Hill by 2013.
Ferrotungsten prices for material exported out of China recently exceeded $US50/kg of contained tungsten, driven by the rising cost of feedstock. Big Hill and, potentially, Mulgine Hill, offer a longer term source of feedstock as the global supply of tungsten raw materials continues to tighten.
“We have an expanding tungsten resource base in near-surface deposits. Big Hill has demon-strated the ability to make exceptional purity feedstock. With the new resource at Mulgine Hill we can look at the possibility of extending our supply chain for decades into the future. ” commented Managing Director Terry Butler-Blaxell.
