Canadian silica processing company Homerun Resources has concluded the option to acquire a 100% stake in the Tatooine silica project in the Canadian province of British Columbia.
The agreement to acquire the project was announced in September last year. Homerun will issue the remaining 1.2 million of its shares to the vendor ClaimHunt to complete the purchase option.
Last year, the company agreed to make a cash payment of $7,500 (C$10,034) and an outlay of $200,000 on work expenditures for the project.
It also agreed to issue 1.45 million of its shares to ClaimHunt over a four-year period.
Located next to the community of Brisco in the province, the Tatooine silica project covers around 5,100ha of land. It is host to highly-pure quartzite of Middle to Upper Ordovician Mount Wilson Formation.
The quartzite is hard, massive, white, medium to fine-grained and overlaid by dolomite.
The Brisco silica deposit, a historical mine, is located on the western part of Tatooine. Brisco is said to have been mined for quartzite silica in 1964 and 1990, producing 2,450 tonnes (t) and 60,000t, respectively.
Random samples taken from Brisco in 1964 are said to have returned 98.66% of silica or silicon dioxide (SiO2), 0.47% of aluminium oxide (Al2O3), 0.06% of iron oxide (Fe2O3) and 0.08% calcium oxide (CaO).
It now adds to the company’s Americas-based portfolio of critical elements and energy metals projects in advanced stages.
Homerun had carried out works this year that claim to show the potential for discovery of a high-purity quartz silica resource with substantial size at the project.
The highly pure silica can be used as the input material for semiconductor, solar, battery and other advanced materials industries.
As detailed in a recent technical report on the project, the company plans to undertake work programmes including bulk sample, market research and mapping and sampling.
It will collect bulk samples for metallurgical testing and preliminary physical parameters characterisation.
If these characteristics are understood more clearly, it can conduct an early-stage market study for market niche quantification.
A detailed mapping programme will also help establish locations and geometry of the quartzite units at the project.
It can also help in exploring additional bodies of mineralisation to fully understand and qualify the extent and nature of mineralisation present.
