Ridiculous delay for results wrote it off in my mind ages ago,...

Ridiculous delay for results wrote it off in my mind ages ago, but maybe the market was holding out hope. Despite a bounce in the market today 'someone' has kept their foot on the ask and the price, not that much volume gone through. Sellers should be comfortable with this mob that long delayed exploration results aren't a positive surprise risk, but hopefully there is truth to the pitch Toliara could get approval any day now...

Can't be bothered looking for my old posts comparing BSE laterite rutile exploration plays to SVM's Malawi laterite rutile project, but SVM has done all the work and scoping studies to explain what grade of rutile in what part of the profile is required to make bank. In short;

+2% TiO2 in rutile in the top few meters representing the most concentrated remnant rutile mineralisation (physical and chemical)
+1% TiO2 in rutile over top 5-10m representing typical chemical weathering enrichment of rutile in laterite profile
~1% TiO2 in saprolite between upper clay and fresh rock for economies of scale open pits
Fresh rock extremely unlikely to represent economic proposition, especially with copious amounts of pyrite.
Even then, SVM need co-existing graphite credits to make the project sing. Shallow >1% rutile will struggle with low tonnes per hectare and large footprint overheads verse a deeper open pit
Low grade rutile in laterite must be a bulk mining operation by definition (low value ore = large tonnage). That means % rutile must be viewed over multiple holes and large areas that represent a possible large mining path (take it all bulk mining economies of scale). The odd high grade hole into the odd rutile rich sedimentary unit won;t cut it, has to bulk out over many holes.
Thus, exploration should follow SVM's sensible method of cheap, shallow auger then only Rc drill well defined, high grade laterite supergene targets (which by definition sit over lower grade primary rock mineralisation).
Glad to see it's not Scott Curruthers running this circus, he would know better I think.

BSE... no plan with surface TiO2 target generation because probably very few surface results above 0.7% TiO2, or 1%, let alone 2% TiO2. X-Section deep drilling chasing I don;t know what, very infrequent HG rutile down the throat of some skinny lithology unit? Needle in a haystack when the haystack isn;t going to make sense anyway if the upper laterite clays are near barren...
SVM shows us the scale (note 2km scale) and tenor of surface TiO2 (rutile hosted) grades in laterite you need to be looking for (including graphite credits). Section shows the saprolite potential at depth that sits under the surface enriched soils. No patience required, just a sensible, cheap, methodical surface-down auger program... give SVM a call if they need advice, nice guys and happy to help Im sure..