Samphire Technical

Land Use

The region extending west and south of Whyalla is mainly used for grazing on natural vegetation. There are extensive iron ore mining operations located in the Middleback Ranges to the west and south-west of Whyalla. The proposed Blackbush Field Trial is located on the southern end of the Nonowie Station, a pastoral station which has a long history of sheep grazing.

Geology

The Blackbush Deposit occurs in the Pirie Basin on the Eastern Eyre Peninsula, south of Whyalla. Topographically, the area comprises a coastal plain in the east and a tableland in the west separated by a 20 metre high north to northeast trending escarpment.

The uranium mineralisation is contained in the fluvial channel sediments of the Eocene age Kanaka Beds. These channels are incised into a basement of granite of Proterozoic age. Overlying the Kanaka Bed sediments is the Miocene age Melton Limestone which comprises a basal sandy unit overlain by a 10 to 25 metre thick blanket of limestone, marl and clay. Overlying the Melton Limestone is the Pliocene Gibbon Beds which consists of 18 to 22 metres of impervious plastic clay, succeeded by a thin Quaternary sequence.

Sedimentary Mineralisation

The uranium mineralisation discovered is hosted in permeable sands and potentially amenable to In-Situ Recovery (ISR). The extent and quantity of mineralisation is estimated by evaluating data collected from drilling and geophysical logging to determine the geology and uranium content of the mineralised layers. The Blackbush deposit is considered to be of potential economic significance. See the latest ASX resource statement for a quantitative summary of the Blackbush deposit.

Primary Granite Hosted Mineralisation

Granite hosted mineralisation was first announced on the 25^th of May 2011 and prompted the Managing Director to make the following very positive comment, "this discovery of an apparently uranium-only mineralisation in a Hiltaba suite granite so exciting as an exploration play for the Samphire project".

More recent announcements (ASX releases 2^nd and 5^th of December 2011) have confirmed the above comments and resulted in a significant change of emphasis for the project summarised by the following extract.

"A comprehensive re-evaluation of all the data acquired to date will be undertaken to completely characterise all of the mineralisation within the resource estimates, scope all of the geological metallurgical and mining alternatives, and identify and rank the optimal mining method for all of the sediment hosted and granite hosted materials present." ASX release 5^th of December 2011.