Rome Resources Plc (AIM:RMR, FRA:33R) has reported its strongest drilling results to date at the Kalayi prospect, pointing to potential resource expansion.
Chief executive Paul Barrett joined Proactive earlier this week, where he outlined wider intercepts and new zones that could materially increase the project’s footprint.
Watch the full interview below, followed by a detailed Q&A on the latest exploration progress and next steps.
Proactive: I'm joined by Paul Barrett, the CEO of Rome Resources PLC. Paul you're calling these your strongest intercepts to date, what's changed at Kalayi to deliver that step up in grade and width?
Paul Barrett: Yeah. Hi, Steven. What has happened is we've been quite successful, really, with this drilling campaign. Over 3000m, most of it on Kalayi. And what we've been doing is chasing the shallower intercepts a little bit deeper and getting a little bit more bolder. And we have come across some really good intercepts. I would say 5 or 6 of the holes in this sequence have been about much, much better head and shoulders above what we've seen previously, not necessarily in terms of grade, but in terms of the widths of the intercepts.
And there are areas that now we're going to take a little step back because of course we've got to wait for the assays. And then we will update the mineral resource. But in the meantime we'll be working on what the next stage of work looks like.
Proactive: As you said, Paul, these are XRF readings for now. How confident are you they will translate into equally strong lab assays?
Paul Barrett: Well, what we've done is we've had a change of equipment halfway through. But this is a pretty sophisticated handheld device that we've got. What we've done to try and reduce any errors is in the important sections, do two or three passes in different orientations with the XRF and average those out.
I think what we will see is because of the greater widths, once you get to ten meters or more width, the error reduces obviously because you've got much more of a better sample to play with. And so therefore I think they will be pretty indicative of what we're going to get. It will never be exact, so we can't say anything quantitative until we get the assays back. To be honest, this is semi-quantitative.
Proactive: You flagged a potential uplift in the resource, Paul, how material could that be, what would it mean for the project?
Paul Barrett: Well it could be very material. We have seen these wider intercepts and looking at them on the map, if you look at the location of some of the new intercepts in new areas of the prospect, that could increase the footprint quite a lot.
And of course, they're still open at depth. So this is going to be part of our planning—how we access these deeper parts of the Kalayi prospect. We will probably do exactly what they did at Alphamin, which is drill shallow angle holes with a new rig from down the slope, so that it's easier access into the deeper parts of the play.
We will work on that in the next few weeks and see what we come up with in terms of a program. But it is positive and it could be pretty transformational in terms of the numbers.
Proactive: With Kalayi just eight kilometres from that Alphamin operation, how do you see the path from exploration to potential development?
Paul Barrett: Well, I think it is relatively straightforward. Alphamin has a few years of mine life left at the moment and, like us, is looking for additional resource. So it fits quite well.
Obviously, we're only eight kilometres away, so the route to commercializing the tin at Kalayi is pretty simple.
Proactive: Paul, I hope you will continue to keep us updated with your progress.