Latitude & Longitude (WGS84):	32° 28' 44'' South , 115° 54' 37'' East
Latitude & Longitude (decimal):	-32.47908,115.91033
GeoHash:	G#: qd4rjx77d
Locality type:	Mine
Köppen climate type:	Csa : Hot-summer Mediterranean climate
Nearest Settlements:	Place Population Distance North Dandalup 341 (2013) 7.1km Keysbrook 570 (2015) 7.3km Nambeelup 512 (2015) 9.4km Stake Hill 494 (2015) 10.9km Karnup 770 (2018) 12.9km

MZI Resources Limited opened a mineral sands mine, about 5 kilometres south-west of Keysbrook in late 2015. The location is 70 kilometres south of Perth.

The deposit covers 1400 hectares, as a dunal deposit with no overburden, mineralisation 2 to 5 metres depth from the surface. It has an unusual heavy mineral suite, compared to the other titanium and zircon deposits in Western Australia. Leucoxene is the major component of the deposit.

The concentrate is trucked to Doral's MSP plant at Picton, and then the resulting product is exported from the Bunbury port. The mine has a fifteen year life span, and is considered the largest producer of high value leucoxene in the world. Veteran prospector Mark Creasy is a major shareholder at 35%, while former Sirius managing director Mark Bennett is leading the new company. Leucoxene is used in pigment production, and is found in paints, food colouring etc. The minor zircon is used in ceramics.

The resource contains 26 Mt being 670 000 insitu THM, including 26% THM grade, L70 27.8%, L88 46.6%, zircon 14.6%, other 11%. Altogether the deposit is 89% HM. All of the ilmenite at the site is high grade. . Australia accounts for 85% of leucoxene extracted globally.

Regions containing this locality

Australian Plate (Australia Plate)	Tectonic Plate
Perth Basin, Western Australia, Australia	Basin
Pinjarra Orogen, Western Australia, Australia	Orogen
Mandurah Terrace, Perth Basin, Western Australia, Australia

Regional Geology

This geological map and associated information on rock units at or nearby to the coordinates given for this locality is based on relatively small scale geological maps provided by various national Geological Surveys. This does not necessarily represent the complete geology at this locality but it gives a background for the region in which it is found.

Click on geological units on the map for more information. Click here to view full-screen map on Macrostrat.org

Pleistocene 0.0117 - 2.588 Ma ID: 878570

Guildford Formation Age: Pleistocene (0.0117 - 2.588 Ma) Stratigraphic Name: Guildford Formation Description: Alluvial sand and clay with shallow-marine and estuarine lenses and local basal conglomerate. Comments: regolith; synthesis of multiple published descriptions Lithology: Regolith Reference: Raymond, O.L., Liu, S., Gallagher, R., Zhang, W., Highet, L.M. Surface Geology of Australia 1:1 million scale dataset 2012 edition. Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia). [5]

Cretaceous - Jurassic 66 - 201.3 Ma ID: 3187905

Mesozoic sedimentary rocks Age: Mesozoic (66 - 201.3 Ma) Comments: Perth Basin Lithology: Sedimentary rocks Reference: Chorlton, L.B. Generalized geology of the world: bedrock domains and major faults in GIS format: a small-scale world geology map with an extended geological attribute database. doi: 10.4095/223767. Geological Survey of Canada, Open File 5529. [154]

Data and map coding provided by Macrostrat.org, used under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License

References