Marmota confirms major titanium zone at Muckanippie with heavy mineral grades as high as 63%
Up-and-coming exploration company Marmota (ASX: MEU) has unveiled further upside at its Muckanippie EL 6166 titanium discovery with new “spectacular bonanza” drilling results.
The company said that the further identification of heavy mineral (HM) concentrations and thick intercepts confirmed Muckanippie as a major new titanium discovery hosted in HM sands.
Notably, the new results extend the size of the discovery in every direction, expanding the mineralised zone to 3.2 kilometres by 1.8km and identifying high-grade HM of over 20% at both the western and eastern extremes of the tenement.
High-grade opportunity
The latest results have also confirmed the shallow nature of the Muckanippie discovery, with some of the HM intersections starting close to surface, while the maximum downhole grade has more than doubled to 63% HM.
The new success follows Marmota’s November 2024 discovery of significant, thick, rich titanium mineralisation at Muckanippie from surface in every discovery hole.
Those discovery holes featured titanium grades of more than 10%.
Follow-up review
A follow-up geological review in January 2025 identified a regional-scale palaeochannel transecting both Marmota’s discovery at Muckanippie and Petratherm’s (ASX: PTR) thick, rich titanium mineralisation find nearby, also in the Muckanippie area.
Work published in November 2024 by the Geological Survey of South Australia has informed the company’s understanding of the palaeochannel.
Marmota holds a section of the titanium-bearing palaeochannel on its tenements that is approximately 28km in length, of which approximately 10km lies within Marmota’s tenements to the west and approximately 18km within its tenements to the east.
High-value mineral
Titanium is recognised as a critical mineral with a range of uses in energy storage, defence, space, semiconductors, surgical implants, pigments and the production of metal alloys.
Analysts place an approximate current value of $38.67 billion on the global titanium market.
They expect it to grow at a compound annual rate of 3.8% to reach $46.5 billion by 2030.