Sheffield Resources' timing to enter the mineral sands industry could not have been better.

At a time when prices for mineral sands products are strong and the market outlook is robust, the Perth-based company is exploring three high-quality mineral sands assets with significant upside potential around Western Australia.

The most advanced is the Eneabba project, which includes the Yandanooka and Durack deposits.

Sheffield delivered promising results from its current drilling program at Eneabba earlier this year when it identified a new heavy minerals discovery at Durack.

The company reported that a scoping study had shown that the discovery of near-surface deposits, similar to that which already exists at Yandanooka, would have the potential to significantly improve the already robust economics for the project.

Sheffield managing director Bruce McQuitty said Durack shared many attributes with the Yandanooka prospect, a significant zircon and rutile deposit with little overburden and a core of high-grade heavy mineral.

Yandanooka, which has a rich history of exploration dating back to the 1980s with Iluka Resources, consists of a central high grade core averaging 3.8% HM enveloped by a lower grade halo.

In August last year, Sheffield announced a maiden resource estimate for the Yandanooka deposit of 1.84 Mt of contained heavy mineral within a total resource of 71.75 Mt at 2.6% HM.

McQuitty said the discovery at Durack, 25km south of Yandanooka, supported the company's strategy to target deposits that provided clear exploration and development opportunities.

"Importantly, the discovery at Durack is expected to make the project economics of the current prefeasibility study even more attractive than the robust results demonstrated by our scoping study," he said.

Eneabba currently has a total resource of 161Mt at 2.5% HM spread over three deposits.

McQuitty said the company expected to add significantly to the project's resource through its next phase of drilling.

"We are into prefeasibility work now after having completed a scoping study at Eneabba during March," he said.

"We are moving forward with this project with a view to develop an operation by about 2015."

Despite Eneabba being the company's most advanced project, McQuitty anticipates that the company's Dampier zircon project will in the future take the mantle as its flagship project.

The project area was previously explored by Rio Tinto between 2004 and 2009, when two zones of significant HM concentration, known as Thunderbird and Argo, were identified.

McQuitty said Dampier, which the company has scheduled for a start to drilling in July, demonstrated the promise of a flagship project as it was a very large deposit of a high grade nature.

"We have a drill program of in excess of 10,000m

planned for Dampier," he said.

"From that we expect it to provide results to be used in a resource estimate by the fourth quarter and also as material for metallurgical test work."

The company set an exploration target of 450-850Mt at 5-10% HM for the Thunderbird prospect late last year.

Sheffield's final notable mineral sands asset is the mammoth McCalls deposit, which has an inferred resource of 4.4 billion tonnes at 1.2% HM.

McQuitty explained that a project of McCalls' size was beyond the company's means to develop at present and due to that it had placed more emphasis on the Dampier and Eneabba projects.

"We will continue work at McCalls and plan on searching for a strategic partner to work on the project's development when that time comes," he said.

"However, we definitely regard that project as a long-term prospect at this stage."

To help fund its exploration activities, Sheffield raised $A10 million during the March quarter through the placement of up to 33.35 million shares at an issue price of 30 cents a share.

The company said the placement ensured it was well funded to undertake the first drilling phase at the Dampier project and to advance the Eneabba project towards feasibility.

"We have a strong organic growth strategy and this raising put us in position to achieve that," McQuitty said.

"We are looking at developing a medium scale project at Eneabba, which has excellent infrastructure but is also the type of deposits we are finding there also have production and development advantages.

"This is because the mineralisation and Yandanooka and Durack is near surface and the deposits are very broad, which allows a high mining rate and more straight forward mining methods."

Prices for minerals sands have increased strongly over the past two years and have been forecast to continue their growth until at least 2013.

Sheffield's acquisition of its mineral sands projects came at an opportune time just prior to this escalation in prices and demand for the product, especially for zircon and rutile.

McQuitty said the company had responded to the upturn in the mineral sands market by fast tracking its projects.

"It was always our strategy to advance the projects but the escalation of prices has given us the opportunity to raise money and the confidence to go harder and faster than some junior companies usually might," McQuitty said.

"We see strong prices and strong demand for mineral sands well into the future - that is partly a function of a dearth of new projects, particularly zircon and rutile projects.

"These deposits are getting harder to find and we had also seen fairly flat mineral sands prices for some time prior to the surge that started in late 2010 - that discouraged new entrants to the sector and discouraged exploration.

"Our timing was perfect for this opportunity and since then we have been very active drilling and estimating resources on our projects."

Developing projects and creating value from them is nothing new for the experienced board at Sheffield either.

The team advancing these mineral sands projects was also at the helm of Pilbara-focused iron ore explorer Warrick Resources when it merged with Atlas Iron in 2009.

The company hasn't entirely left its iron ore origins behind either, with Sheffield holding interests in tenements for the steel-making material in the Pilbara.

Sheffield's most promising iron ore prospect is the Three Pools project, where it has set an exploration target of 20-60 Mt at 56-60% iron.

Meanwhile, Sheffield also continues to develop its talc assets near Three Springs in WA.

It is one of the few companies on the Australian Securities Exchange that offers significant exposure to talc, which is used mainly in the manufacture of paper, ceramics and plastics.

McQuitty said the company was in the early stages of exploration for talc in the area, but had established the presence of high-quality microcrystallite talc.

"We plan to conduct further drilling on our talc prospects and expect to deliver more results from that in the coming months," he said.

*A version of this report, first published in the August 2012 edition of RESOURCESTOCKS magazine, was commissioned by Sheffield Resources