Is Empire Metals the Mount Everest of titanium
“…What we have found has huge potential, not only in terms of the biggest thing on the planet. The scale is hard to imagine. It’s like taking Mount Everest and inverting it…”
The Tellness mine in Norway has it, Rio Tinto has it in Quebec, Kenmare Resources has it in Mozambique and Empire Metals now has a titanium resource that could possibly blow all these projects out of the water.
Empire knew its Pitfield Project in Western Australia was interesting. It was acquired as a copper-gold prospect in 2022, but one year later the company was telling investors about hitting large intercepts of titanium mineralisation at surface in soils over 100 square kilometres.
July’s update further reinforced the size and scope of Pitfield with its presence of critical element ilmenite and managing director Shaun Bunn describing it as a “one-of-a-kind” mineral event.
Bunn knows. He’s been around in the nicest possible way. “I spent seven years working on mineral sands, heavy mineral sands deposits. I’m quite familiar with the entire titanium industry and I have never seen anything quite like this. So beach sands generally have three or four percent heavy minerals in the sand, half of that might be ilmenite. And when you talk about titanium oxides, ilmenite, it’s usually about 50 percent. So when you distil all that down, you’re talking about one percent TiO2 (Titanium Dioxide). We’re five times to ten times that grade at Pitfield. That in itself is an extraordinary outcome.”
What is also extraordinary is the area Bunn is describing. “We have a magnetics anomaly covering 40km by 8km, whose core is 30km long and extends to a depth of at least 6km.” To visualise that 6km depth Bunn uses the analogy of a very well known mountain. “It’s like taking Mount Everest and inverting it.”
“What we have found has huge potential, not only in terms of the biggest thing on the planet, the scale is hard to imagine.”
Investors imagination about the commercial possibilities will no doubt run riot, but it’s how Bunn and the board will monetise this asset while developing the rest of the “great portfolio.”
“How we manage the rest of those projects as Pitfield becomes the dominant play remains to be seen,” says Bunn. “I think we’ll be looking at segregating, farming in, trying to get value out of our whole portfolio and put the focus fairly and squarely on Pitfield.
So with Pitfield being the centre of attention watch Shaun talk to Sarah Lowther about how this giant mineral system has a lot more to offer.
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Access the company’s latest corporate presentation
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Follow the company on Twitter @Empiremetalsltd
The author was remunerated but does not hold shares in the company
