Douala Basin HMS Project

Background to Douala Basin HMS Project

The Douala Basin HMS Project consists of 3 granted exploration permits and 3 exploration permits under valid applications (Figure 1). The Edea Sud licence is a fully granted permit covering an area of 440km² whilst the 5 licence applications (Mbanga, Maleke, Mungo, Diwong, and Mbongo) cover an area of 2,140km² giving the total project package a land endowment of 2,580km² across the Douala Basin of Western Cameroon. The tenements are all located within 50km of the deep-water port city of Douala. 

Geologically the Douala Basin is a coastal sedimentary basin consisting of a package of mainly marine sedimentary formations of Cretaceous to Quaternary in age. Thick, preserved sequences of sandy material are known to exist across the tenement package and these are thought to represent palaeo-placer coastline dune deposits. These sedimentary environments are prospective for classic aeolian placer HMS deposits which normally host accumulations of valuable heavy minerals such as ilmenite, zircon, rutile and monazite. The Diwong licence was previously known as the Missole Project was held by the French multinational Eramet. Eramet drilled some 60 sonic holes on the Project for 1,080m (582 samples) with 39 hand auger holes for 190m (39 samples) specially targeting rutile and zircon. The drilling intersected thick sequences of sands and confirmed the presence of rutile and zircon within the valuable heavy mineral assemblage (Table 1). Eramet discontinued the Project when it exited Cameroon in 2023 primarily due to the unsuitable setting of the mineralisation within its core Central Cameroon project Akonalinga (which targeted alluvial placer rutile deposits within the lower lying river systems).