Speewah fluorite speewah dome project

The Speewah Fluorite deposit is located along an unsealed track, 30 kilometres west of the Great Northern Highway and 110 kilometres south-west of Kununurra, in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. It is centred on the Speewah Dome multi mineral project being developed by King River Copper Limited.

Speewah Fluorite has Future as a Supplier of Acid Grade Fluorspar

The Speewah Fluorite deposit has an Inferred Resource of 2.6 million tonnes grading at 23.6 percent fluorite and an Indicated and Inferred Fluorite Resource totaling 6.7 million tonnes grading at 24.6 percent fluorite. King River Copper Limited see the deposit as a supplier of acid grade fluorspar. It is planning to develop the Speewah Fluorite project by sharing infrastructure being built to mine the nearby vanadium project.

Fluorite Deposits Discovered at Speewah in 1905

Fluorite was discovered to exist in the Speewah area back in 1905. Further small scale exploration of the area was carried out in the 1920's and 1940's. Some large companies were involved in exploring the area for heavy minerals, base minerals and uranium, between 1967 and 1971 but it was not until further exploration took place in 1972 and 1973 that the ABC fluorite deposit was discovered containing nine fluorite veins. During the 1970's and 1980's a number of different companies held exploration tenements over the area with little success, however, some highlights in fluorite exploration did occur from 1984 through to 1987 and again from 1990 through to 1997.

King River Copper Limited Acquired Speewah Dome Tenements in 2002

NiPlats, the original company name of the current company, King River Copper Limited, acquired all the Speewah tenements in 2002 and began exploring the area for fluorite, base metals and vanadium. There is no Speewah Fluorite project as such as all the various deposits are part of the all encompassing Speewah Dome Project. The Speewah Dome covers an area of about 30 kilometres in width and 50 kilometres in length, with fluorite being located in the northern end of the north south trending Central Fault Zone. Fluorite is also found to exist in Magnetite Valley and further south in the Central Structure Prospect. Fluorite is also found to exist further to the east along the Kings River Fault Zone, it is known here as the ABC fluorite deposit and the King's Fault Prospect.

The Speewah Dome is located to the west of the Halls Creek Mobile Belt that is separated from the Kimberley Block by the Greenvale Fault Zone. This is the zone at Speewah that hosts carbonatites, basalt feeder vents as well as barite and fluorite deposits. The King River Copper Limited tenements in the East Kimberley cover an area of 780 square kilometres. The discovery of gold and copper within the Speewah Dome tenement area in 2010 resulted in the company focussing more on this type of development going forward, as a result it didn't complete its studies of its vanadium and fluorite projects at that time.