Overview

Our CRMs are developed exclusively for the mining, exploration and analytical industries and are distributed worldwide in over 135 countries. Our products cover a wide range of commodities, concentrations and mineralisation styles and are well characterised in rigorous inter-laboratory testing programs and certified in accordance with International Standards Organisation (ISO) recommendations.

The OREAS® range of certified reference materials (CRMs) are prepared entirely from natural ore materials sourced from deposits throughout Australia, Southeast Asia, North and South America and Africa. This includes refractory gold, gold occluded in silicates and other metals hosted in refractory minerals. Being sourced naturally from real ore deposits, guarantees our CRMs will behave the same as your field samples during sample fusion and digestion. This upholds the integrity of the analytical process providing absolute confidence in your assay data.

Preparation

The OREAS® range consists of the largest stock supply of reference materials in the world with batch sizes ranging from 100kg to 12,000kg.

Sample materials are sourced from naturally occurring geological deposits including:

  • Laboratory pulp residues
  • Laboratory coarse rejects
  • Exploration drill samples (RC cuttings and DD cores)
  • Surface, pit or underground samples
  • Downstream metallurgical products (concentrates, tailings, floats, etc)

Stringent preparation protocols are adhered to at every stage of processing to ensure every CRM we produce meets our own internal QC requirements of homogeneity and stability. This provides our clients the assurance that any errors seen in QC data can be confidently attributed to laboratory measurement error, not a sampling error of the CRM.

We often combine ore grade material with barren/waste rock in appropriate proportions to achieve the desired grades. This enables us to produce CRMs at specific grades including pigeon pairs.

We have extensive experience in the preparation of a diverse range of CRMs including gold, gold-silver, gold-copper-(molybdenum), copper, copper-gold-uranium, copper-molybdenum, iron, nickel sulphide and laterite, zinc oxide, Zn-Pb-Ag sulphide and oxide, polymetallic (Au-Cu-Zn-Pb-Ag), platinum group elements, tungsten, uranium, Rare Earth Elements (REE), manganese, phosphate, copper concentrates, gold gravity circuit concentrates, polymetallic concentrates (Zn-Pb-Ag, Cu-Au(Ag), Ni-Co), tailings and related metallurgical materials, tin, molybdenum, chromium, phosphorous, lithium, graphite, niobium-tantalum, multi-element lithogeochem and numerous barren (blank) materials.

Packaging

Our automated packaging machines produce single-use units made from an extremely robust packaging medium of high barrier foil film for an effective long-term barrier to oxygen and moisture. The single-use packets are easy to use and greatly reduce the risk of contamination during sub-sampling. OREAS® unit sizes include:

  • 10g (± inert gas)
  • 60g (± inert gas)
  • 500g and 1kg

Custom sizes and labelling are available, please contact us for further information. Labelling is optional and incorporates print media that are easily erasable with common household solvents. Packing under inert gas is routine for reactive materials (e.g. sulphide-bearing) ensuring long term stability. We also offer vacuum packaging, wide mouth plastic jars, plastic buckets and 44 Gallon (166L) steel drums as specified below.

  • Single use packets (laminated foil packets): 5g to 250g
  • Vacuum packaging (plastic ‘barrier’ bags): 500g to 10kg
  • Wide mouth plastic jars: 500g to 2.5kg
  • Plastic buckets: 10kg to 20kg
  • Steel drums (44 Gallon; 166L): 100kg to 150kg (depending on density)

All OREAS® CRMs are stable in their final packaging and segregation has been studied and confirmed as a non-issue. Please see our technical note for more information.

Certification

Every CRM in the OREAS® range undergoes a comprehensive inter-laboratory ‘round robin’ characterisation program. These programs are continually improved to better suit the requirements of geologists and chemists in terms of the elements and analytical methods they are seeking to control. Our unique relationship with leading laboratories worldwide enables us to certify CRMs for complete elemental suites and often by multiple methodologies on a regular basis. Certification is structured around single or multiple submission round robins to participating laboratories and includes an Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) component to permit an evaluation of within- and between-unit homogeneity.

Certificate of Analysis documentation is all-inclusive and in line with the requirements of ISO guides 31, 35, 16269 and 16476 and includes Certified Values, Performance Gates (SD’s), 95% Confidence Intervals, 95% Tolerance Intervals, graphical analysis and tabulations of all results in Excel spreadsheet format.

For more information, please see the ‘Using CRMs’ section.