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VRX Silica drilling aims to increase and upgrade silica sand resources

Last updated: 04:40 13 Mar 2019 GMT, First published: 04:25 13 Mar 2019 GMT

Silica sand
The company is focusing on increasing silica sand resources

VRX Silica Ltd (ASX:VRX) has begun drilling at the North Arrowsmith, Central Arrowsmith and Muchea silica sands projects in Western Australia with the aim of increasing and upgrading resources.

Aircore drilling at the Arrowsmith projects will follow-up initial shallow hand auger drilling and will be closer spaced and deeper than the initial work.

This work is aimed at increasing the tonnage of silica sand and JORC confidence within the mining lease areas.

The program at Muchea will also be closer spaced than the original aircore drilling and aims to increase the tonnage within the area of indicated resource and the JORC confidence within the area of the recently applied for mining lease.

READ: VRX Silica improves silica gradings to 99.9% at Muchea-Arrowsmith portfolio

A total of 189 holes for 1,726 metres at Arrowsmith and 57 holes at Muchea for 887 metres is planned and will take up to two weeks to complete.

Drilling will be undertaken with a Landcruiser mounted Mantis aircore drill rig which is capable of deeper drill holes than those previously drilled by hand auger.

VRX managing director Bruce Maluish said: “These drill programs follow on from the initial drilling and resource estimates with results from our extensive test work programs justifying our investment to increase these resources and our confidence level to estimate reserves.

“Results from these drill programs will add substantial value to our inventory and confirm our previous assumptions about the extent and quality of our silica sand projects.”

The drilling program is being conducted on existing tracks 

The drilling is underway at the three projects. 

This drilling is planned to extend and upgrade the current dataset that has been used to estimate the company’s silica sand resources as shown below.