July 10, 2012

 

 

With the persisting demand for agro-mineral projects in Brazil, Eagle Star Minerals Corp., has been preparing its position as a supplier of agro-minerals since declaring a strategic shift in focus to phosphate research in February.

 

By acquiring the rights to 111 mineral claims, Eagle Star has amassed a strategic land base of approximately 220,767 hectares in northeastern Brazil that features strong-grade phosphates.

 

In the past few months, two very material changes have occurred within the company, with a new discovery within the Canabrava block at its Ruth project in the centre of Piauí state, near the cities of Picos and Eliseu Martins, and the acquisition of Bomfim - located in the southern most part of the Tocantins state.

 

Beginning with the Canabrava block, Eagle Star in June increased its ownership of the property by 17,509 hectares - 11 claims - in light of its recent discovery of a mineralised phosphate package of at least seven metres in thickness. The whole Canabrava block covers 40,678 hectares across 23 mineral claims.

 

The recent discovery is still open at depth and contains grades of up to 12% phosphate.

 

Eagle Star's senior manager of corporate development, Patrick Brandreth, says that the company's team had the opportunity to investigate the Canabrava block further over the past few months.

 

"We've actually traced that [discovery] over 15 kilometres at surface and it is still open laterally and at depth. We claimed additional areas in that region based on the premises that the package extends further than 15 kilometres."

 

Indeed, that premise led Eagle Star to conduct a new regional exploration program, focusing this time on different geological formations, where the mineralised rock types outcrop extensively and are visible as a result of road cuts.

 

"This is very significant news. The newly discovered package itself is quite unique as it is made up of two materials," says Brandreth.

 

"One of the materials is a high-grade phosphorite sandstone, with grades from 4-12 % P2O5 and the other is a lower grade siltstone, yielding grades from 1 to 3 % P2O5 - both have very different physical characteristics which make the possibility of separating the two highly likely."

 

"What is interesting is that our team believes that it will be very possible to separate the two grades with traditional mining techniques similar to those used in Boxite," says Brandreth.

 

"We will [then] take the low grade reject material to use as a natural fertiliser and tests are ongoing for that, while the high-grade material is to be sent away for concentration."

 

Results of the chemical and metallurgical tests to determine the solubility of the material are expected by mid-July.