 |
 |
||||||
[February 2010]
EMC Metals in JV to Explore and Develop Australian Rare Earth Scandium Deposit
EMC Metals Corp (Vancouver, BC, Canada) has announced the formation of a Joint Venture with Jervois Mining Limited (Jervois, Melbourne, VIC, Australia) to develop Jervois' world class Nyngan Scandium deposit located in New South Wales, Australia.
"EMC's mandate for growth is to aggressively pursue opportunities in specialty and unusual metals. In December 2009 we acquired TTS Inc and the services of its founder Willem Duyvesteyn, a leading expert in the development of technologies for the recovery of these metals," said EMC's President Peter Bosse. "Signing an agreement only two months later to develop the world's only primary Scandium property proves EMC's total commitment to the rapid execution of its mandate and bodes well for future developments".
The Nyngan Deposit is located approximately 500km north-west of Sydney, Australia and is accessible via a 25km sealed road from the town of Nyngan. The property consists of part of exploration license EL 6009 and all of EL 6096 and covers over 9,000 hectares.
The Nyngan deposit is hosted within the lateritic zone of the Gilgai Intrusion, one of several Alaskan-type mafic and ultramafic bodies which intrude Cambrian-Ordovician metasediments collectively called the Girilambone Group. The laterite zone, locally up to 40m thick, is layered with hematitic clay at the surface followed by limonitic clay, saprolitic clay, weathered bedrock and finally fresh bedrock. The scandium mineralisation is concentrated within the hematitic, limonitic, and saprolitic zones with values up to 350ppm Sc.
In the 1980s, 134 rotary air blast (RAB) holes (for 6779 metres) and two diamond drill holes (each 250 metres deep) were drilled in the area exploring several of these Alaskan-type pyroxenite bodies for platinum group. Between 1999 and 2001, two traverses of reverse circulation (RC) drill holes exploring for nickel were drilled across the Gilgai Intrusion. Jervois obtained the sample pulps from these RC holes and analysed them for scandium; the results indicated there was a significant enrichment of Scandium in the Gilgai laterite.
In 2006, Jervois completed a 2,638 metre drill programme consisting of 64 reverse circulation (RC) holes and 5 air core holes at the Gilgai Project. From this drilling, Douglas McKenna and Partners produced a JORC compliant resource estimation for Jervois.
"The Board of Jervois Mining Limited (JRV) regards this joint venture with EMC as a very significant event for JRV and its shareholders. The recent acquisition by EMC of TTS Inc was critical to the decision to enter this joint venture. TTS and its founder, Willem Duyvesteyn, are both well known to JRV dating back to 2001," said Duncan Pursell, Jervois' Managing Director, adding: "JRV is fully conversant with the TTS research work on nickel/cobalt recovery using 'heap leach' techniques and more recently, work on scandium recovery. These activities, in the Board's view, made the TTS parent company, EMC, the perfect 'fit' as a partner for JRV."
ENDS