Iron Ore: Brockman & Hancock Ranges

Hancock Ranges Iron Ore Project

The Hancock Ranges Iron Ore Project (E47/3954), is within 20kms of the Newman township and borders licences held by Fortescue Metals Group, Hancock Prospecting, BHP Billiton (Mount Whaleback), Hope Downs and Brockman Mining.

The Hancock Ranges tenement was previously explored by Rio Tinto plc, BHP Group plc, and more recently Volta Mining Limited (“Volta”).

Historical work outlined two areas of high-grade iron ore mineralisation: the Sirius Extension Prospect and the Kalgan Prospect. In 2013, Volta undertook reconnaissance mapping and surface rock chip sampling and drilled 4 drill holes for a total of 475m which confirmed an economic strike extension of the Sirius Iron Ore deposit within the tenement. This strike extension is hosted in the Brockman Iron Formation with hole 14SERC004 returning 126m @ 60.28% Fe from surface, with surface sampling further along strike supporting the strike extension.

Exploration UPDATE

A brief site visit in November 2019 as part of a due diligence exercise enabled a few samples to be collected at both BHP19 and BHP20 prospects and over part of the Kalgan prospect with independent laboratory results confirming the Company’s views on the exploration potential of both of these projects.

Alien has compiled all historic data into a core database extracting all relevant information from a series of old reports and maps and combine this with any new regional remote sensing data available.

Alien completed an exploration field program in November 2020, sampling over the known prospects on both tenements fully outlining the surface extent of the mineralised units as well as to add mapping and structural information to look for potential repeat structures and orebodies undiscovered to date.

Broad regional traverses have also been done to test as mentioned above the unchartered areas of the tenements and to better understand any repeat structures associated with structural controls in the region.

Alien feel that the BHP20 prospect is potentially a drill ready target hence from the model devised finalisation of some scout drilling is also being planned for preparation to drill when access, permission and funding is available.

The exploration field program has also laid the foundations for the ongoing drilling program at the Hancock Range tenement, which is targeting the Kalgan, Sirius extension prospects.

The laboratory assays have confirmed high-grade iron ore results of up to 66% Fe. These are excellent results and confirm the findings from XRF readings taken in late October. Our technical team has scoped out drilling access at the Hancock Ranges Project and in particular the Kalgan prospect. Additionally, the team has taken additional samples from Kalgan to in-fill areas covered from the October programme.

Seven mapping transects were walked across the Kalgan Prospect to test for the presence and lateral extent of previously reported high grade occurrences of iron ore. In situ outcrop of rock was mapped with 128 mapping points and 25 rock chip samples collected from mainly Banded Iron Formation (BIF) outcrops where iron was the dominant mineral present. BIF dominated by silica bands, dolerite, shale and rhyolite was not sampled in this program. In addition to the walked transects, a helicopter survey of the surrounding terrain was conducted and a further 12 samples were collected.

A series of BIF ridges were mapped parallel to the regional trend and on strike and parallel to the original Kalgan prospect trend and have returned constantly high-grade Iron with the majority from the sampling averaging over 60% Fe. Figure 3 below shows the sample locations and Iron Ore grades and shows the continuity of ridges C and D especially with the current sampling continuity both with consistently greater than 60% Fe grades. Ridge B also appears to host high-grade iron ore mineralisation and was recently sampled to fill in the gap between ridges B and F.

The Kalgan prospect laboratory results show strong continuation and correlation along a nearly 3km strike-length along several exposed ridges with excellent grades of DSO level iron.

While the mapping and sampling has not comprehensively evaluated all the BIF occurrences within the tenement, at least two targets have been highlighted for additional follow-up work concurrently with the maiden drilling campaign.

BROCKMAN IRON ORE PROJECT, E47/3953

BHP, as part of their much larger regional programme, covered this tenement in the 1960’s and identified two ‘deposits’ from a combination of mapping and surface rock chip sampling. Hence prospect BHP19 and 20 are associated with the Brockman tenement. The average iron content of four rock-chip samples from prospect BHP19 was 62.8% Fe and the average for four samples from prospect BHP20 was 62% Fe.

BHP used generalised outcrop dimensions and average grade of rock-chip sampling to calculate the estimated Fe tonnage per vertical feet, returning equivalent of 300,000 tons per vertical meter over a surface area of 0.12 square kilometres on the BHP20 prospect.

Alien carried out a very brief reconnaissance field visit in November 2019 and were greatly encouraged by the few surface samples that were able to be collected in the conditions and time frame in the Kalgan and Sirius extension prospects with grades similar if not greater than historic sampling.

The tenement is dominated by the Brockman Iron Formation with tertiary alluvial cover is prevalent and covers much of the surface.

Both tenements remain highly underexplored yet already contain significant potential for both hosting economic high grade iron ore deposits.

Alien have postulated an initial model of the dip and strike of the BHP20 target with provisional drill hole locations to test this model. Drilling has recently been carried out by Rio Tinto immediately south of the tenement boundary on the detrital material shed from this mineralised zone.