Osmond Resources has received a first set of barnstorming assays back from its 15-hole diamond drilling program in Spain, with the results confirming why the company’s Orión EU critical-minerals project has been generating so much industry chatter of late.
Orión sits in southern Spain’s Jaén province and spans a massive 228 square kilometres, covering 756 claims across a quartz-rich system laced with critical minerals.
A view of zone 3, part of Osmond Resources’ Orion EU critical minerals project in southern Spain.
Slicing through the Pochico Formation – a laminated quartzite section the company says is prospective for heavy minerals – the drill bit hit a 3-metre interval from 108.45m recording a whopping 10.39 per cent titanium dioxide, 3.51 per cent zircon, 756 part per million (ppm) hafnium and 0.72 per cent total rare earth oxides (TREO).
A deeper dive into the interval revealed even more impressive numbers. A 2.1-metre slice came in at 13.18 per cent titanium dioxide, 4.55 per cent zircon and nearly one per cent TREO.
But the real show-stopper was an even more concentrated 1.5-metre section that graded 15.92 per cent titanium dioxide, 5.67 per cent zircon, more than 1,200ppm hafnium and 1.15 per cent TREO. And as a final flourish, the hole was also loaded with lucrative industrial magnet metals such as neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium and terbium. In heavy-mineral terms, the numbers equate to indicative grades of 15.7 per cent rutile, 6 per cent ilmenite, 9.8 per cent zircon and 1.7 per cent monazite.
Notably, these results also match the assays from bulk samples pulled from nearby outcrops showing remarkable total heavy-mineral contents above 30 per cent and similar rare earth numbers.
The company has already punched in four holes across two mineralised zones at Orión and has two more in progress. Each site was pegged from earlier radiometric highs and bulk-sample clues – and so far, the drill bit is proving those early signals were right on the money.
In zone one, three holes, drilled over 1.7 kilometres of strike, have all hit the same three to five metre section of mineral-packed laminated quartzite at varying depths. Meanwhile in zone three, a single step-out hole to the northwest intersected similar rocks, hinting at a huge mineralised structure potentially stretching for more than 9.5 kilometres.
The company is now fast-tracking assays, with batches expected every few weeks as it tightens the geological model over the system. Early signs point to the mineralised layers holding their shape and grade from hole to hole – exactly the kind of consistency needed to turn Orión into a long-life, multi-commodity development.
