Completion of Major Drilling Campaign Targeting Maiden Mineral Resource Estimate
Empire Metals Limited, the AIM-quoted and OTCQB-traded exploration and development company, is pleased to announce the successful completion of its largest drilling campaign to date at the Pitfield Project in Western Australia (‘Pitfield’ or the ‘Project’). This programme focussed on high-grade titanium mineralisation within the in-situ weathered cap at the Thomas Prospect and is designed to underpin the Company’s maiden JORC compliant Mineral Resource Estimate (‘MRE’).
Highlights
- 180 drill holes completed at the Thomas prospect, comprising:
- 140 Air Core (‘AC’) drill holes for a total of 6,360 metres;
- 40 Reverse Circulation (‘RC’) drill holes for a total of 3,776 metres;
- Total metres drilled: 10,136
- Drilling was conducted on a systematic 400m by 200m grid covering over 1,352 hectares and was designed to support the initial MRE as well as providing key data for economic evaluation studies.
- The Thomas Prospect was selected as the basis for the maiden MRE due to the extensive, thick and high-grade titanium mineralisation hosted within the broad, in-situ weathered zone.
- This campaign marks a major milestone in the development of Pitfield, laying the foundation for a globally significant MRE and enabling the identification of near-surface, high grade zones to support the development of mine planning and ore scheduling as part of upcoming economic evaluation studies.
Shaun Bunn, Managing Director, said: “We are very pleased to have completed this important drilling campaign on time, on budget and without safety incident. With drilling now complete, our focus turns to resource modelling and progressing Pitfield towards its maiden Mineral Resource Estimate, which is a key milestone as we look to bring this globally significant titanium project to commercialisation, maintaining the ambitious development schedule we have delivered over the past two years.”
MRE Drilling Programme
With the completion of the current drill campaign, the largest undertaken by the Company to date, total drilling at Pitfield has now surpassed 32,000m across 382 holes, providing a robust foundation for geological modelling, resource definition (refer Figure 1) and initial economic evaluation work.
Since commencing the maiden drilling campaign at Pitfield on 27 March 2023 Empire has completed 382 drill holes for a total 32,265 metres comprising:
- 17 Diamond drill holes for 2,704 m
- 140 RC drill holes for 18,764 m
- 225 AC drill holes for 10,797 m.
Figure 1. Grey-scale magnetics overlain by airborne gravity data showing RC, AC and diamond drillhole collar locations and JORC Exploration Target areas.
May-June 2025 Campaign
The location and spacing of the current RC and AC drillholes were designed, with the input of mineral resource consultants Snowden-Optiro, to provide the necessary drill assay data density to allow the preparation of an MRE at the Thomas Prospect.
The completed drill campaign consisted of 140 AC drillholes, on a 400 x 200m drillhole-spaced grid with an average forecast depth of 45.4m, for a total of 6,360 metres, and 40 RC drillholes within the AC drilling grid, to an average depth of 94.4m, for a total of 3,776 metres. The overall drillhole grid extends 5.2km by 2.6km and totals an area of 1,352 hectares (refer Figure 2).
Figure 2. RC and AC drill hole collar locations within the Thomas Prospect priority area.
During the campaign all drill holes were subsampled on a 2m interval, resulting in over 5,000 drill samples being collected, logged by our on-site team of geologists and then prepared for shipment to Intertek’s Perth based analytical laboratory. As of the end of June all drill hole and QA/QC samples have been delivered to Intertek for geochemical analysis and assaying.
The Pitfield Titanium Project
Located within the Mid-West region of Western Australia, near the northern wheatbelt town of Three Springs, the Pitfield titanium project lies 313km north of Perth and 156km southeast of Geraldton, the Mid West region’s capital and major port. Western Australia is ranked as one of the top mining jurisdictions in the world according to the Fraser Institute’s Investment Attractiveness Index published in 2023, and has mining-friendly policies, stable government, transparency, and advanced technology expertise. Pitfield has existing connections to port (both road & rail), HV power substations, and is nearby to natural gas pipelines as well as a green energy hydrogen fuel hub, which is under planning and development (refer Figure 2).
Figure 2. Pitfield Project Location showing theMid-West Region Infrastructure and Services
Competent Person Statement
The technical information in this report that relates to the Pitfield Project has been compiled by Mr Andrew Faragher, an employee of Empire Metals Australia Pty Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of Empire. Mr Faragher is a Member of the Australian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy. Mr Faragher has sufficient experience that is relevant to the style of mineralisation and type of deposit under consideration and to the activity being undertaken to qualify as a Competent Person as defined in the 2012 Edition of the ‘Australasian Code for Reporting of Exploration Results, Mineral Resources and Ore Reserves’. Mr Faragher consents to the inclusion in this release of the matters based on his information in the form and context in which it appears.
Market Abuse Regulation (MAR) Disclosure
Certain information contained in this announcement would have been deemed inside information for the purposes of Article 7 of Regulation (EU) No 596/2014, as incorporated into UK law by the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, until the release of this announcement.
**ENDS**
For further information please visit www.empiremetals.co.uk or contact:
About Empire Metals Limited
Empire Metals is an AIM-listed and OTCQB-traded exploration and resource development company (LON:EEE) with a primary focus on developing Pitfield, an emerging giant titanium project in Western Australia.
The high-grade titanium discovery at Pitfield is of unprecedented scale, with airborne surveys identifying a massive, coincident gravity and magnetics anomaly extending over 40km by 8km by 5km deep. Drill results have indicated excellent continuity in grades and consistency of the mineralised beds and confirm that the sandstone beds hold the higher-grade titanium dioxide (TiO₂) values within the interbedded succession of sandstones, siltstones and conglomerates. The Company is focused on two key prospects (Cosgrove and Thomas), which have been identified as having thick, high-grade, near-surface, bedded TiO₂ mineralisation, each being over 7km in strike length.
An Exploration Target* for Pitfield was declared in 2024, covering the Thomas and Cosgrove mineral prospects, and was estimated to contain between 26.4 to 32.2 billion tonnes with a grade range of 4.5 to 5.5% TiO2. Included within the total Exploration Target* is a subset that covers the weathered sandstone zone, which extends from surface to an average vertical depth of 30m to 40m and is estimated to contain between 4.0 to 4.9 billion tonnes with a grade range of 4.8 to 5.9% TiO2.
The Exploration Target* covers an area less than 20% of the overall mineral system at Pitfield which demonstrates the potential for significant further upside.
Empire is now accelerating the economic development of Pitfield, with a vision to produce a high-value titanium metal or pigment quality product at Pitfield, to realise the full value potential of this exceptional deposit.
The Company also has two further exploration projects in Australia; the Eclipse Project and the Walton Project in Western Australia, in addition to three precious metals projects located in a historically high-grade gold producing region of Austria.
*The potential quantity and grade of the Exploration Target is conceptual in nature. There has been insufficient exploration to estimate a Mineral Resource and it is uncertain if further exploration will result in the estimation of a Mineral Resource.
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