Iron ore developer Centrex Metals Limited's strategic partnerships with Top 10 China-based steel mills to explore for and develop iron projects on South Australia's Eyre Peninsula, has delivered its second major resource milestone in under a month.

Centrex announced today that Eyre Iron Pty Ltd, its 40:60 joint venture with Chinese steel major, Wuhan Iron & Steel Group Co has confirmed a maiden JORC-Inferred resource of 159 million tonnes at the coastal Carrow prospect northeast of Tumby Bay.

The Carrow mineralization has returned magnetite concentrate grades of 66.9% Fe with the resource estimate prepared from along a 3.4km strike length and to a depth of 500m below surface.

Eyre Iron, which has five iron prospective tenements on southern Eyre Peninsula between Dutton Bay and Port Lincoln, has been intensively drilling the areas since late last year.

The Carrow estimate announced today, prepared independently by Coffey Mining, is the first Centrex-WISCO resource for any of that JV's tenements.

The news follows a maiden Inferred iron resource estimate of 103Mt announced early in May for the Bungalow deposit. This tenement is north of Carrow in the Cowell area and is a Centrex joint venture with China's Baotou Iron and Steel Group Ltd.

Both the WISCO and Baogang JVs are magnetite pursuits and both China parties have equity and off-take stakes in Centrex.

The Carrow resource announced that it is from interim drilling results and Centrex said that further drilling should provide additions to the initial estimate, particularly as a further 40 million tonne to 60 million tonne of exploration target extensions are evaluated.

Mr Jim White MD of Centrex said that "Carrow is just 25km from the proposed Centrex-WISCO development of a deepwater bulk commodities port at Sheep Hill. The proposed port is to be a separate JV. The close proximity of the Carrow deposit to the proposed export hub and its favorable coarse grind size are behind the decision to continue the Prefeasibility Study for the project.”

He added that "We are now on track to complete that PFS this year, with environmental and social baseline studies recently completed and process test work, plant and infrastructure designs now being finalized.”

(Sourced from www.mineweb.com)