A mining company says it can push ahead with building a new heavy mineral sand mine on Cape York Peninsula after securing $5 million of Chinese investment.
Metallica Minerals has ordered a processing plant for its Urquart Point project, near Weipa, which it hopes will be producing heavy mineral sands (HMS) by June next year.
Managing director Andrew Gillies says despite ‘flat’ prices, there are synergies between mining and shipping HMS and bauxite out of the western Cape York region.
Mr Gillies says a ‘paradigm shift’ in the bauxite market since a ban on Indonesian exports earlier this year meant the company was well-positioned to exploit both at the same time.
“You’ve got titanium minerals, which is used in anything from paints to titanium metal, and zircon, used for ceramics and high-tech alloys, hip replacements, all that sort of thing.”
“For the size of its operation, it’ll be a very small footprint. But we hope to expand from there further north where we’ll be drilling a T16 target, which is about 180 kilometres north of Weipa, and we’re expecting big things from there as well.”
In its statement to the Australian Stock Exchange, Metallica Minerals says a Chinese investor (through a wholly-owned Australian subsidiary, Ozore Resources Pty Ltd) holds a one-third stake, which will increase to 50 per cent when a final payment is made, bringing total investment to $7.5 million.
Mr Gillies says the new joint venture agreement provides much-needed certainty.
“There’s a drought out there for raising money for mineral projects in Australia and elsewhere. We’re a small company and now we can move forward fully funded,” he said.
Source: ABC.net.au
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