Sheffield Resources has established a maiden Resource estimate for its Yandanooka heavy mineral sand (HMS) project of 71.75 million tonnes (Mt) at 2.6% of heavy mineral (HM) containing 1.84Mt HM in Indicated and Inferred categories.

The resource includes 37.5Mt at 3.8% HM containing 1.41Mt HM as an Indicated Resource within a high-crade core to the deposit.

The company intends to build upon the milestone Resource and will now investigate its feasibility for near term development, targeting a Scoping Study to begin in October.

Importantly, the Resource coincides with strengthening prices in the supply constrained titanium dioxide and zircon markets. Zircon prices (standard grade, bulk) are currently at US$2,200–2,400/tonne.

The urbanisation of developing economies has resulted in rising demand for zircon and titanium dioxide and a lack of adequate supply, making the Yandanooka project financial attractive.

Also, the Yandanooka deposit in Western Australia's Mid West region is at surface, close to existing infrastructure connecting to Geraldton Port 140 kilometres to the northwest and has a high value mineral assemblage: 11.5% zircon, 6.9% rutile, 10.2% leucoxene, 61.9% ilmenite.

Bruce McQuitty, managing director, said “this is a terrific result for our shareholders and a great achievement by Sheffield’s exploration team, just eight months after listing.”

“Yandanooka is just one of several heavy mineral sand projects held by Sheffield in the North Perth Basin. Our strategy is to carefully evaluate each project with a view to sequential mining with a mobile plant.”

Previous work by Iluka Resources has determined a TiO2 content of the ilmenite of 64.7%, based on analysis of 6 composite samples.

The high TiO2 content of the ilmenite indicates potential suitability as feed for chloride process pigment production or synthetic rutile production.

Sheffield plans to conduct further mineral separation studies to gain information on the ilmenite quality.

Yandanooka is interpreted to be a dunal-style HMS deposit situated along an Eocene palaeo-shoreline. Sheffield has secured tenure over 70km of strike of this prospective shoreline which includes known HM occurrences Arrino and Durack.

The company gears its projects towards the steel industry feed cycle (iron ore and tungsten) and the emerging fillers-ceramics-pigments cycle (talc, zircon, titanium dioxide).

Preliminary discussions have taken place with potential customers for Sheffield’s HMS product, with discussions expected to continue through the development of the company’s suite of HMS projects.