Location
Located within the Mid-West region of Western Australia, near the northern wheatbelt town of Three Springs, Pitfield lies just 313kms north of Perth and 156 kms south of Geraldton, the Mid West region’s capital.
Western Australia is ranked in the Fraser Institute’s Investment Attractiveness Index as one of the top mining jurisdictions in the world, and is renowned for having mining-friendly policies, stable government, transparency, and advanced technology expertise.
The immediate project area has existing connections to port (both road & rail), HV power substations, and natural gas pipelines, and is nearby to a green energy hydrogen fuel hub which is under planning and development.
Empire owns a 70% interest in Pitfield, which consists of four exploration tenements covering a combined area of ~1042 km2, and Empire operates as the manager in a Joint Venture with Century Minerals Pty Ltd.
Geology Setting
Pitfield lies in a unique setting along the western boundary of the Yilgarn Craton, within the Yandanooka Basin which consists mainly of interbedded volcaniclastic sedimentary rocks.
Importantly, the Yandanooka Basin lies near the junction of two major structures, the Darling Fault and Yandanooka-Cape Riche Lineament, the likely source of the hydrothermal fluids that have strongly altered the sedimentary rocks within the Basin.
The favourable geology of the Yandanooka basin for large-scale metal deposits has previously attracted major mining companies which carried out exploration within the area, including: Kennecott Corporation (“Kennecott”), MIM Holdings (“MIM”), BHP Group Limited (“BHP”) and CRA.
Exploration Activities
Regional geophysical surveys carried out historically by the Geological Survey of Western Australia (GSWA) outlined giant coincident gravity and magnetics anomalies within the basin.
Airborne magnetics (AM) and airborne electromagnetic (AEM) surveys were conducted by Empire in 2022 and these identified anomalies sourced to a massive alteration footprint-coincident gravity, magnetic and electromagnetic anomalies extending over 40km N-S. A further airborne gravity survey then identified a dense core within the magnetics anomaly, containing strong, discrete gravity anomalies indicative of high-density bodies of subsurface rock.
In 2023, the Company launched a series of drill campaigns to begin to test the grade and extent of the giant mineralised system.
The maiden drill campaign (March-April 2023) drilled 21 RC holes, 3,206m in total, of which the majority were in the north near Mt Scratch, targeting highly chargeable zones based on Dipole-Dipole IP surveys. High grade titanium (4% and 10% TiO2) was identified in all but one of 21 holes drilled (one drillhole being terminated in shallow sand cover), with nearly a quarter of the holes still ending in high TiO2 values.
In September-October 2023 the Company completed three deep diamond core drillholes, for a total of ~ 1,217m drilled, all of which intersected thick, high-grade TiO2 beds of hematite-epidote-carbonate altered sandstone, with the bottom of each hole stopped in mineralisation.
The second RC drilling campaign, a 40 drillhole programme totalling a combined 5,718m, was completed November-December 2023 and has shown that the shallow sandstone-rich beds, and the associated higher-grade TiO2 mineralisation, are continuous with the deeper high-grade diamond drillhole intersections.
A select number of the more outstanding drill intervals is highlighted as follows:
- RC23TOM002 intersected 168m @ 6.91% TiO2 from 12m;
- RC23TOM003 intersected 180m @ 6.14% TiO2 from 0m;
- RC23COS004 intersected 154m @ 5.50% TiO2 from 0m;
- RC23COS005 intersected 148m @ 6.18% TiO2 from 6m.
Drill results to date indicate excellent continuity in grades and consistency of mineralized beds. Importantly, the mineralisation remains completely open at depth and along strike.
Further diamond core and RC drilling is planned, targeting shallow, higher grade mineralisation, and is expected to be completed by April 2024. The programme consists of four diamond drillholes (800 metres), to continue testing for higher grade, sandstone dominant beds and to collect further mineralogical and metallurgical samples, and 40 RC drillholes (6,000 metres) to further test the known areas of extensive, thick, shallow sandstone-rich beds as well as new targets identified along the length of the coincident magnetics-gravity anomaly.
Empire’s strategy is to carry out further exploration and resource drilling in 2024, to delineate high-grade, shallow zones of titanium mineralization, and to complete mineralogical/metallurgical characterization and economic processing/product optimization studies: all aimed at accelerating project development & value creation.
