Abstract Pulmoddai mineral sand deposit which extends about 800,000m2 is located in the Northeast coastal zone of Sri Lanka. It is the largest and well known heavy mineral sand deposit in Sri Lanka. High-quality Zirconium-bearing minerals like Rutile, Zircon, and Ilmenite are concentrated in this deposit. This study focuses to analyse the spatial distribution of the heavy minerals abundance and sedimentlogical characteristics of the deposit. Five miles (8 km) long stretch along the coast of this deposit was selected as the study area. Ten traverses representing two traverses within each mile are demarcated across the coastline and are running from inshore to backshore. Forty sand samples representing inshore, swash zone, berm, and backshore region were collected. These samples were analysed using a dry sieve and heavy liquid separation methods. According to statistical analysis, sediments in the Pulmoddai mineral sand deposit are mostly fine-grained, moderately to moderately well sorted. Also, these are negatively skewed to nearly symmetrical and mesokurtic in nature. According to the linear discrimination function, these sediments are shallow marine agitated depositions controlled by aeolian, fluvial and marine depositional environments under the high impact of turbidity currents. The average heavy mineral concentration at the inshore, swash zone, berm region, and backshore (dune) region is 5.95%, 10.87%, 12.82%, and 23.5% respectively. The concentration of the heavy minerals increases towards the backshore and also increases towards the southern part of the study area.