Interesting, I hadn't seen these before, but this company has...

Interesting, I hadn't seen these before, but this company has not been on my radar until I saw the results announced this morning.

Rutile grades seem encouraging - if these are real I reckon this would be an appealing project. There seems to be a LOT of pseudorutile, which can vary in grade anything from low-60's TiO2 up to 90-ish % TiO2. Pseudorutile (or leucoxene) can be difficult to recover due to it's generally quite porous nature, as a result of the iron leaching out and leaving voids, so take the assays there with a grain of salt, although it can be recovered with a well-designed circuit. There is little mention of ilmenite, but perhaps some of the pseudorutile is ilmenite that might be amenable to the Becher process (synthetic rutile process route used by Tronox and Iluka in WA). I'd really like to see a detailed mineralogy report rather than just press release-type stuff, because that would really inform - typically these sorts of analysis (QEMSCAN and the like) give categories of the different grades and their relative abundance and their size distribution. In these reports (admittedly I breezed through them quickly) there doesn't seem to be much mention of particle size distribution, the amount of clay/slimes present, or the amount of oversize / concretions that needs to be rejected up front. There is no mention of particle coatings, and given the enthusiastic descriptions along the lines of "very low in deleterious elements", I'd be surprised and annoyed if they reveal the presence of this phenomenon in a future update.

So while this news seems pretty encouraging on the face of it, there is a looooong way to go. Next step is for them to get good representative samples compiled, and then subject them to detailed characterisation so a potential upgrade circuit can be determined. This conceptual circuit then needs to be tested by a competent metallurgical laboratory, and the recovery parameters determined. Only once the recovery parameters and overall flowsheet is reasonably well ascertained can a detailed economic analysis of the overall project be performed, as recovery sets the achievable product / sales / revenue estimates. But with HM grades like those disclosed in the ground, it seems very encouraging, as it means a smaller processing plant and lower capital expenditure.

I'll be watching with interest. I wouldn't be concerned about the volatility today (unless I had bought at 40c) as if this is real, long term prospects are surely positive.