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Minerals Hub / Mineral Dossiers / Zircon

A stout amber-orange crystal with flat prism faces and bevelled ends, translucent and glowing, on a pale grey ground.
Illustrative artwork: zircon, showing its characteristic prismatic crystal form. A generic specimen, not material from this project. · Illustration · Osmond Hub
Assayed / quantified

Zircon

ZrSiO₄ · nesosilicate

Zircon is the zirconium mineral at Orión, reported on two bases in the bulk channel samples — as a mineral percentage and as ZrO₂ — and the one mineral besides monazite that Osmond has taken as far as a preliminary concentrate.

Yields

→ zirconium · hafnium

Data status

Assayed / quantified

Class

nesosilicate

Why it matters

As general mineralogy, not an Osmond figure, zircon's largest markets are ceramics and opacifiers, foundry sand and refractories, and it is bought on the ZrO₂ content of the concentrate rather than on the rock it came from — which is why a project reports both a mineral percentage and an oxide grade.

Osmond has reported both at Orión, dated 19 February 2026: bulk channel samples of 8.77–9.79% zircon as a mass-balance mineral percentage, and ZrO₂ of 5.07–5.57% on an oxide basis by assay. Those are grades for the channel samples. Separately, on 3 March 2026, preliminary testwork produced a combined zircon concentrate grading 50.2% ZrO₂ at about 70% recovery, against a stated target of ≥66% ZrO₂ — the grade Osmond calls premium. The same 19 February 2026 channel samples carry total heavy minerals of 29.4–32.8%, with up to roughly 40% estimated in the AV-01bis interval.

Two qualifications travel with that. The concentrate figure is preliminary testwork and sits below the stated target, not at it; and the mineral percentages are mass-balance estimates calculated from oxide assays rather than directly measured.

Quantified in the bulk channel samples on both a mineral and an oxide basis, and carried to a preliminary concentrate grading below Osmond's stated target; no deposit-wide grade.

Used for

  1. 01Ceramics and opacifiers — the whitening and opacifying phase in glazes and tiles.
  2. 02Foundry sand — moulding and casting sand.
  3. 03Refractories — high-temperature linings and shapes.

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