Historic (mainly 1920 – 1954) reports on investigations of bauxite deposits in eastern New South Wales and south-eastern Queensland provided a good starting base.

Tonnage estimates made up to 1954 were relatively modest. According to H. B. Owen (Bauxite in Australia, Bureau of Mineral Resources Bulletin no. 24), in 1954 the largest known bauxite deposit was Parish’s:

4,755,000 long tonnes averaging 3.2% SiO2, 38.6% Al2O3, 30.1% Fe2O3, 5.0% TiO2, 33.7%
Available Al2O3 (Al2O3 soluble in 10 percent NaOH solution boiling at atmospheric pressure).

ABx has secured this deposit, which is known as Target A – located in Inverell (EL 6997). Drill testing undertaken in January - February and August 2009 confirmed the silica and alumina content and the thickness of bauxite layer (about 7 metres), however the tonnage potential is an order of magnitude larger than the historic estimate.

Historic context was as follows:

The Parish team also tested 15 other deposits in the Inverell region.

Their testing programme started in January 1947 and in June 1948 the team was redeployed to Wingello [now within our Wingello West (EL 7279) and Penrose (ELA 3774) tenements], where two deposits containing about 1.9 million long tons and 1.45 million long tons respectively were proven.

In the late 1940’s – early 1950’s, there was no domestic alumina or aluminium metal production and imports of aluminium metal amounted to 16,456 tons (Owen, 1954 – page 7).

An alumina and aluminium plant was under construction at Bell Bay in Tasmania; planned production rate was 26,000 tons of alumina and 13,000 tons of aluminium metal per annum ( Alan Trengove – Discovery / Stories of modern mineral exploration – Stockwell Press, 1979).

Bauxite deposits known in Tasmania at the time contained sufficient tonnages of appropriate quality for the plant at Bell Bay, so that the deposits at Inverell and Wingello were considered to represent a back-up for the longer term.

In late 1940’s / early 1950’s there was no need to continue testing of extensions to increase tonnages in known deposits.

Therefore reserves reported at that time are modest.

Those who have studied historic reports but did not take into consideration historic context, made erroneous conclusions that deposits in easily accessible parts of eastern New South Wales and south-east Queensland are small.

A bauxite deposit was discovered in 1955 at Weipa on Cape York Peninsula; due to very remote location and total lack of infrastructure, it was essential to prove up large tonnage and develop a project on a large scale to make it economic.

In the period 1960 to 2000, large deposits like Weipa and Gove located in very remote northern Australian locations and large low grade deposits in favourable location in West Australia (and similar large projects overseas, notably in the Republic of Guinea and in the Amazon region of Brazil) were able to meet global demand for bauxite.

However, in recent years there were significant changes in supply and demand:
Large deposits discovered in the late 1950’s to 1970’s are still capable of meeting demand however, after a very long period of mining and a degree of high-grading, the quality of bauxite is in decline.

Some large bauxite deposits that were discovered by the 1970’s still remain to be developed but because of a high cost remote location and other major problems which caused postponement of mine development, one can expect further postponements because the problems have not been solved.

Increasing political problems and eruptions of conflicts resulting in tragic loss of life in some of the bauxite producing countries (for example the Republic of Guinea) is another significant factor affecting global bauxite supply – demand balance.

For such reasons, bauxite deposits in favourable low cost locations will
be developed ahead of those in remote locations.

The ABx objective is to define several deposits (or groups of deposits) containing 100 - 200 million tonnes each in several sectors along the east coast of Australia.

The main focus is on quality because it is essential to produce premium quality bauxite in order to establish market presence.

During two years of extensive field work our team has made discoveries of new bauxite outcrops / exposures and defined new targets for drilling which are located up to 100km from the nearest bauxite occurrences reported in literature. Exploration for new targets will continue contemporaneously with drill testing of targets defined to date.