District Council of Streaky Bay staff recently met with Nick Harding (Executive Director), James Marsh (Managing Director) and Conan Mills (Exploration Supervisor), regarding the progress of the potential Poochera project.

The Poochera project has a potential world class halloysite-kaolin deposit, with a high purity that has numerous opportunities for use in new emerging nanotechnology and energy storage applications along with the well established high quality ceramics market.

Managing Director, James Marsh, advised that mineral ore sampling had recently been completed with samples sent to China, Japan, US, UK and Western Australia, with favourable results and strong interest expressed by potential future markets.

Initially the company proposed to mine the deposit via a simple quarry type operation and export the material as a raw product. Further sampling results and investigations have indicated that there is a strong potential for processing to occur on site with a pure material or combination of both to be exported from site. On site processing would use a simple dry, physical sorting method without the need for water or chemicals that increases the value of the product, and would result in a higher number of jobs created.

The company is well advanced on a scoping study, which will consider its markets, types of processing plants, supporting infrastructure costs and required energy and consumable costs. This study is due for completion at end of August 2019.

The purity of the product, the deposit size and potential for onsite processing is a positive step for this project and subject to completion of financial studies, mine planning and approvals, initial production could potentially commence within 2 years.

James Marsh (Executive Director) said that after over 30 years working for commercial kaolin companies in many other countries and sites he was “excited about the purity found at this site”.

Streaky Bay Council’s Chief Executive Officer indicated “Council is very supportive of the project and  relevant staff are working with the Company to look at supporting infrastructure, including the road network and potential energy supply, to assist with the projects development”.