Australia Minerals & Mining acquires Gibson Alumina project

The acquisition of Gibson High Purity Alumina project in Western Australia has boosted aluminous clay resources held by Australia Minerals & Mining to 147 million tonnes.The 100 per cent owned Gibson project, located 10km by road from the Esperance Port, comprises 200 blocks.Previous exploration in 1990 by Western Mining Corporation, now BHP Billiton, included 47 aircore drill holes and a bulk testing program.An announcement from the company this week said the acquisition will substantially increase the combined resources from its Gibson, Kerrigan and Meckering resources to 297 million tonnes.

AMMG will now work on planning their next phase of exploration to increase the resource at the Meckering project, where a drilling program is likely to start later this year.Using aluminous clay samples from four of AMMG's south west HPA projects, its processing technology has produced more than 99.9 per cent high purity alumina.The mineralogy of the aluminous clay found at the Gibson deposit indicates to AMMG that the resource can be a clean source of aluminous clay for HPA production using the process. Upon receiving necessary approvals and negotiating land access with the freehold landowners, AMMG plans to undertake bulk sampling and metallurgical analysis on aluminous clay samples taken from the Gibson project.