Surefire Resources NL (ASX:SRN) continues to make strides in exploration and drilling across its three projects in Western Australia focused on gold, vanadium and iron.
While the company is seeing positive results from drilling at the Yidby Gold Project, it is also preparing to start drilling for vanadium at Victory Bore/Unaly Hill and for iron at Perenjori.
Yidby Gold Project
Surefire’s initial drilling of the mobile metal ion (MMI) gold anomalies at Yidby has returned wide gold drilling intersections.
The MMI anomalies are in the Discovery Zone, up to 400 metres to the west of the Yidby Road Gold Deposit.
Drilling is progressing well with the first 12 holes of the program, planned to test a) the previously untested MMI gold anomalies and b) step-out extensions to previous drilling intersections, already completed.
Surefire’s drilling is continuing with the company expecting to expand the current gold mineralised footprint of the Yidby Road Gold Project beyond its existing boundaries to the northwest and southeast.
Yidby Gold Project - plan of current mineralisation and drilling targets.
Victory Bore / Unaly Hill Project
Surefire recently confirmed the economic viability of its Victory Bore / Unaly Hill Project in the Yilgarn region of Western Australia following an updated beneficiation scoping study.
The project has an inferred resource of 237 million tonnes at 0.43% vanadium pentoxide (V2O5), 24.9% iron (Fe), and 5.9% titanium dioxide (TiO2).
This constitutes one of the largest contained vanadium resources in WA.
Surefire noted that “The vanadium market is fast evolving as a critical element of the mass commercialisation of large-scale battery solutions in the fast-tracked renewables energy sector.
“With demand pressures increasing from specialty metals producers and threats to traditional pushing vanadium prices higher, Surefire’s vanadium outlook is very positive”
A diamond drilling rig has arrived on-site and is setting up to extract diamond drill core to complete geotechnical and metallurgical test work.
The core data will be used to undertake geotechnical studies, for pit design, and follow-up metallurgical tests to optimise the flowsheet.
Pre-eminent consulting firm MinRizon Projects Pty Ltd has been engaged by Surefire to update CAPEX and OPEX estimates as a prelude to initiating a prefeasibility study.
Perenjori Premium Iron Project
Surefire recently purchased the Perenjori West Project, which the company perceives as being in an under-appreciated and under-explored greenstone belt with high prospectivity for gold and base metals.
The project has an exploration target of 870 to 1,240 million tonnes at a grade of 29% to 41% Fe.
Surefire is planning to begin RC (reverse circulation) drilling to infill the currently defined JORC 2004 resource.
Diamond drilling is also planned to obtain samples to reconfirm and expand upon the previous metallurgical test work completed at Perenjori.
Previous test work results indicate a quality concentrate of 66-70% Fe with Al2O3 + CaO less than 5%, can be achieved by conventional magnetic separation with a relatively coarse grind of 75μm.
Existing rail and power are within 15 kilometres of the project and Geraldton Port is a terminus to the rail.
Surefire is in discussion with a third-party infrastructure provider to build, own, and operate a slurry pipeline and transhipment facility independent of Geraldton Port.