australia's identified mineral resources 2005 - Geoscience Australia

AUSTRALIA’S IDENTIFIED MINERAL RESOURCES 2005
Exploration for mineral sands in the Eucla Basin, South Australia (Iluka Resources Ltd).
Iluka committed to invest $12.6 million to modify the Narngulu separation plant and acquire mobile
equipment to process intermediate and tailings stockpiles at Narngulu and Eneabba. The processing
of stockpile material commenced in early 2005 and it is expected to deliver approximately 140 000 t
of additional zircon production over a 32 month period. Iluka also committed to invest A$63 million
to establish two new mining and concentrating operations in Western Australia, which are scheduled
commence production by mid-2005. One will be located at Wagerup with production being
processed at the north-Capel dry plant and will produce approximately 750 000 t of sulphate ilmenite
and 55 000 t of zircon and hyti (Yanis is this high Ti) products over a two and a half year period.
Iluka’s new operation is to be located at Gingin. With production being processed at the Narngulu
dry plant, it will produce about 600 000 t of ilmenite for use as synthetic rutile feedstock, 310 000 t
of chloride grade ilmenite, 75 000 t of rutile and 65 000 t of zircon. Iluka also commenced construction
of the $270 million Douglas project in the Victorian part of the Murray Basin. In 2004 the company
discovered zircon-rutile-ilmenite deposits, Ambrosia and Jacinth, in the Eucla Basin in South Australia.
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The TiWest JV (Ticor Ltd 50%, Kerr McGee Corp 50%) operates an integrated titanium dioxide
project, incorporating a dredging and dry-mining heavy mineral sands operation at Cooljarloo,
dry separation and synthetic rutile plants at Chandala and a titanium dioxide pigment plant at
Kwinana in Western Australia. 2004 production totalled 472 000 t of ilmenite, 76 000 t of zircon,
35 000 t of rutile, 21 000 t of leucoxene, 224 000 t of synthetic rutile and 107 100 t of TiO 2 pigment.
Current reserves for the Cooljarloo operations are 173 Mt of ore averaging 2.7% heavy mineral sands.
To the end of 2004, Consolidated Rutile Ltd’s (CRL) operations at the Yarraman and Enterprise mines
on North Stradbroke Island produced 59 856 t rutile and 43 292 t zircon, representing a combined
improvement of 35 % over 2003 production. The increase was partly due to the introduction of
supplementary dry mining operations in late 2003. Ilmenite production increased marginally by
1% to 124 776 t. At the Enterprise mine, a major upgrade was carried out on the Ibis dredge and
concentrator and the operation is now mining through very low-grade material towards the
Enterprise orebody of some 1.2 billion tonnes, which it is expected to reach in late 2005.