Surefire Resources' flagship 38 million tonnes of aluminium oxide resources may enhance Victory Bore's value

Surefire Resources published its first mineral resource estimate (MRE) of 38 million tonnes of aluminium oxide for the Victory Bore Project in Western Australia, underlining its high-purity alumina (HPA) potential. The MRE can potentially increase the project's value before an economic pre-feasibility study evaluation is scheduled for November of this year.

Surefire announced in March 2023 a large, independently determined Exploration Target Estimate (ETE) for the Victory Bore of 682 million tonnes to 1,190 million tonnes at 0.2 per cent to 0.43 per cent vanadium oxide. In a revised Mineral Resource Estimate (MRE) released earlier this year, the business indicated a 56 per cent increase to their 321 million tonnes at 0.39 per cent vanadium oxide values.

Furthermore, Surefire is evaluating the extraction of 4N HPA from Victory Bore feedstock for inclusion in the project's next pre-feasibility studies. The first resource estimate is 17 million tonnes of aluminium oxide at 23.1 per cent in a near-surface measured and indicated component.

HPA, a 99.99% pure aluminium oxide, is a high-value critical mineral crucial for the industrial sector due to its application in producing synthetic sapphire crystals used in LED lights, semiconductors, watch faces, and smartphones. Because vanadium and aluminium ores are mutually exclusive in the deposit, any future mining at Victory Bore will likely create little waste. Magnetic beneficiation can separate the aluminium from the magnetite and the magnetite from the aluminium.

Initial testing, including liquor leaching and concentration, has been performed. To date, leachate has been used to make Aluminium Chloride Hexahydrate (ACH). ACH was found to be 99.8% pure after recrystallization. Following the next round of testing, Lava Blue will examine contaminant management measures and generate 4N HPA samples.