Poochera Kaolin Project, South Australia

The Poochera kaolin deposits are located near Poochera approximately 100km south-east of Ceduna and 45km east of Streaky Bay.

The Poochera Kaolin Project lies within Exploration Licence (EL) 4575 on western Eyre Peninsula in South Australia.  EL 4575 is held by Minotaur Exploration Ltd (Minotaur) through its wholly owned subsidiary, Great Southern Kaolin Pty Ltd.  There are four known kaolin deposits within EL 4575: Carey’s Well, Tomney, Karcultaby South and Condooringie Well (refer Figure 1).

Figure 1:  Location of Poochera kaolin deposits

In-house and independent testing by nationally recognized laboratories confirmed that kaolin form all four deposits is very pure and exceptionally white and has potential for use in high value kaolin markets that include special ceramics, paints, paper coatings and polymer industries.  Test work also showed that gangue minerals, quartz, mica, anatase and secondary iron oxides, can all be easily removed by conventional wet processing resulting in a pure, white kaolin product.

In February 2009 for Carey’s Well an inferred resource of 20 million tonnes of very white kaolinised granite, within a larger inferred resource of 47 million tonnes of white to off-white kaolinised granite, has been calculated from analysis of material from ~100 drillholes.

Figure 2:  Carey’s Well deposit showing its quality based on Raw Brightness (R₄₅₇) (2009)

In 2011 resource definition and exploration air core drilling was undertaken at Carey’s Well (153 holes), Tomney East (44 holes) and Condooringie Well (27 holes) with kaolinised granite samples processed at Minotaur’s pilot plant and laboratory at Streaky Bay.  The results of this work will be used to prepare an updated resource for the Carey’s Well deposit and, subsequently, for Condooringie Well and Tomney East.

Figure 3:  Streaky Bay pilot plant (May 2011)

Kaolin customers require hydrous and/or calcined kaolin.  During 2011 samples of hydrous kaolin product were despatched to potential customers to gauge suitability of Poochera hydrous kaolin for their products.  Calcining facilities will be installed in the pilot plant in February 2012 to enable production of calcined kaolin product samples for distribution to potential customers.  The market response will influence the design of Poochera’s product range, leading into a prefeasibility study to investigate future mining and processing operations.

Updated January 2012

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