Based in Perth, Western Australia, Image Resources is an inventive, high-tech mineral exploration company with assets in gold, nickel and mineral sands. With their industry-leading extensive aeromagnetic database and expertise in magnetic mapping, Image has a strong advantage in locating valuable resources. Their successful exploration methods have led to the establishment of 3 additional companies; Magnetic Minerals, Meteoric Minerals and Emu Nickel which recently listed on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) and is working on a potentially high-grade nickel deposit, near Kalgoorlie, Western Australia.
Image has the most dominant presence in the North Perth basin with 2,050 square kilometers, making them the largest tenement holder in the area with a specific focus on mineral sands resource development.
In May of 2008 Image announced a maiden resource of 6.4Mt of Heavy Mineral(HM) in the North Perth Basin of Western Australia. This was made up of 28.7Mt averaging 5.5% HM in four separate shallow strands suitable for Dry Mining and 232.7Mt averaging 2.1% HM in three separate deposits suitable for Dredge Mining. The in ground value is nearly US 1.2 billion and contains 4,500,000 tonnes of ilmenite, 545,000 tonnes of zircon, 340,000 tonnes of rutile and zircon plus 390,000 tonnes of garnet.The ilmenite from this resource is suitable for processing to synthetic rutile and also sulphate ilmenite. Due to increasing demand from China, the sulphate ilmenite price has risen from US 85/ton to more than US 100/ton.
Image utilizes aeromagnetic data, a specialized guiding tool to support their mineral exploration. Sometimes depending on the type of resource, this tool can impressively locate direct detection of mineralization. George Sakalidis, Managing Director notes, "There's a direct relationship between mineral sands and the magnetics. If you're looking for mineral sands you may be able to see them directly from the magnetics but for other minerals, such as nickel, gold and other commodities there's no direct relationship. So then you're looking for a fault sign or some complex structural zone, and you have to be able to recognize that, some people may not know what to look for."
But this is an area which Image has the expertise in locating these prospective locations. Sakalidis is a highly experienced geophysicist, a great asset for the company's productivity and effective approach to exploration.
Sakalidis is looking forward to business opportunities with China, "We see that China has very strong interest in one of the ilmenite products, as well as zircon. We think we can supply their sulphate ilmenite, which is what the Chinese have strong demand for. There are three mines near our resource but two of these mines are huge, they are world class mines and 20% of the world's zircon comes from just north of Perth where these are located. We expect the resource base to increase as only 60km of magnetic HM targets have been tested to date of a total of 300km. We think we have enough resources to supply China for their needs. We think potentially we'll have a world class mine big enough to supply 10-15 years."