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(Sharecast News) - Empire Metals said on Wednesday that it has started a diamond drilling campaign at the Thomas prospect within its Pitfield titanium project in Western Australia, marking the next stage of development ahead of pilot-scale testwork planned for early 2026.
The AIM-traded explorer said the 1,000-metre, 10-hole programme was designed to test the high-grade titanium dioxide-rich core of the Thomas prospect identified in previous drilling and included in the project's recently announced mineral resource estimate.
It said the work would provide geological, geochemical, metallurgical and geotechnical data to support ongoing studies and future resource expansion. Assay results are expected in January 2026.
Empire said the Pitfield project hosts one of the world's largest and highest-grade titanium resources, with a current estimate of 2.2 billion tonnes grading 5.1% titanium dioxide, representing just 20% of the known mineralised footprint.
The company recently raised 7m through a share subscription, bringing total available funds to about 11m including existing cash reserves, which it said fully covers all planned work programmes.
"We are pleased to commence this important diamond drilling campaign at Pitfield, focused on testing the high-grade TiO-rich central zone of the Thomas Prospect and delivering both metallurgical and geotechnical drillcore samples which are essential for our ongoing project development studies," said managing director Shaun Bunn.
"Following the recently announced 7 million capital raising, the company is well funded and has set its sights on swiftly completing this next round of drilling, accelerating the metallurgical testwork programmes and moving into continuous pilot-scale testwork in early 2026 in order to deliver high-purity titanium dioxide product samples to potential end users and to support our ongoing engineering and economic studies."
Empire said it expects to transition from the current targeted drilling campaign into a major scale-up phase over the next three to six months, including metallurgical and pilot-scale testwork and large-scale resource drilling.
Preparations were also under way for early engineering, environmental and permitting studies to advance the development pathway at Pitfield.
At 1410 GMT, shares in Empire Metals were down 7.43% at 31.48p.
Reporting by Josh White for Sharecast.com.