https://thewest.com.au/news/kalgoorlie-miner/pioneer-buoyant-on-c...

https://thewest.com.au/news/kalgoorlie-miner/pioneer-buoyant-on-caesium-ng-b881080930z

Pioneer buoyant on caesium

A company operating WA’s first caesium Business is hopeful it will find more of the rare mineral as it prepares to wave off its first shipment from the Port of Esperance today.
Pioneer Resources has wrapped up a four-month mining campaign at its Sinclair mine near Norseman, just the third commercial caesium operation in the world after the Bikita mine in Zimbabwe and Tanco mine in Canada.
Pioneer managing director David Crook said the mine came in under its roughly $7 million budget and produced about 57 per cent more caesium metal than anticipated.
Over the next 12 months 19,000 tonnes of hard rock containing about 1640 tonnes of caesium metal will be shipped to Canada to be received by Tanco mine owner Cabot Corporation, which provided a $US4.8 million prepayment to get the Goldfields mine up and running.
Mr Crook said the revenue from the shipments will fund a “reasonably active” exploration program over the coming years, with evidence the rare caesium host rock, pollucite, may exist elsewhere on its leases.
“It’s a pretty rare mineral and that’s an unusual geological environment, but we do see evidence of that geological environment in other places throughout the Pioneer Dome project,” he said.
“So if nearology is a geo-logical criteria we would start near where we know there’s pollucite and work our way out.”
Pioneer share price was at 1.7¢ yesterday.


Pollucite containing rare caesium is being stockpiled at the Port of Esperance for export to Canada.Picture: Pioneer Resources