Trans-Tasman Resources Ltd from New Zealand was pleased to announce that its iron sands resource estimate at the off-shore iron ore mineral resource has nearly doubled in size. The second official JORC compliant resource has been signed by an independent geological consultants Golders Associates.
The Managing Director of Trans-Tasman Resources, Mr Paul Berend said that the updated JORC compliant mineral resource in its licensed area was currently equivalent to 200 million tonnes of concentrate at 60% Fe. This was a substantial increase over the 102 million tonnes at 60% Fe announced in March this year.
This brings 70 million tonnes of indicated and 130 million tonnes of inferred resources at the off-shore site. The estimate was based on the analysis of sand cores recovered from shallow drilling off the southern Taranaki Coast over 2010 and the summer of 2011 and is validated from aeromagnetic survey.
Mr Berend added that the excellent quality of offshore drilling work, using Trans-Tasman's patented core-drilling rig and onshore sample management, had contributed markedly to this result. The quality data gathered has increased the mathematical confidence of the geological model, which had generated a larger than expected mineral resource.
Bill Bissett the Chairman of the company said that this result further boosts our confidence that the very substantial investment in prospecting for iron ore is likely to prove worthwhile. Given the vast expanse of underwater black sand they would expect to prove an ocean of iron ore.
Mr Berend said that while this is an outstanding result it remains an early estimate over a small percentage within the area currently pegged by the company. He added that as the TTR drilling campaign unfolded they expect the mineral resource to increase very substantially in the coming months. To date drilling has been shallow, but as they further implement the recently instigated deeper drilling programme they expected that the resource estimates would increase markedly.