Australian Mines Limited (ASX:AUZ) has identified several new gold and copper targets in addition to potential extensions to known cobalt-scandium-nickel mineralisation at the 100%-owned Flemington Project in central NSW.
These new targets and potential extensions emanate from a comprehensive independent exploration targeting report prepared for the battery materials development company by RSC Consulting Ltd.
Potential is enhanced
Australian Mines managing director Benjamin Bell said: “The RSC report, which is independent and utilised machine learning to objectively classify lithology that is spatially associated with mineralised areas, is very encouraging.
“Flemington’s potential to be a nationally significant cobalt-scandium-nickel project is enhanced by this report and now we also have prospective copper and gold targets to pursue at Flemington.”
Potential pathfinder elements
In addition to indicating that the cobalt mineralisation remains open to the west and north of the existing mineral resource, a drilling program also returned elevated copper, gold, bismuth and tellurium.
The latter two are potential pathfinder elements of porphyry copper-gold systems in the Lachlan Fold Belt of NSW in which the Flemington Project lies.
This belt is a favourable geological setting for porphyry copper-gold systems, hosting world-class deposits such as Newcrest Mining Limited’s (ASX:NCM) Cadia Operation, as well as more recent discoveries including Alkane Resources Limited’s (ASX:ALK) Boda/North Molong Porphyry Project.
Progressing towards production
The company is focused on progressing Flemington towards production and has purchased an existing water allocation from the open market to support any future processing plant on-site as well as applying for a mining lease over the area.
AUZ has also sought to increase the overall tonnage of the resource at Flemington, after results from the first phase of expansion drilling in August 2019 resulted in a tripling of cobalt mineralisation footprint.
A second drilling program initiated in October 2019 but whose results have been delayed indicates that the cobalt and scandium mineralisation remains open to the west and north of the existing resource.
This provides Australian Mines with the opportunity to update the current resource by completing a diamond core drilling program during the 2020/21 field season to acquire lithology density measurements over the areas of known mineralisation at Flemington.
Target A = copper-gold, Target B = copper-gold, Target C = gold-platinum and Target D = cobalt-nickel-scandium.
Core focus on Sconi
The company is primarily focused on the development of its 100%-owned, Sconi Cobalt-Nickel-Scandium Project in North Queensland and anticipates that any diamond core drilling program at Flemington may occur in the second half of the 2020/21 financial year.
Bell said: “Once developed Sconi will be a globally significant supplier of technology metals to meet the huge demand from the electric vehicle revolution and rapidly expanding energy storage industries.
“However, we retain the capacity to progress our longer-term strategy of developing our Flemington and Thackaringa projects to create additional value for shareholders.”
Ongoing exploration
Australian Mines is commissioning an induced polarisation (IP) survey over two copper-gold porphyry targets (A and B) identified by the RSC report.
This survey, which is designed to detect the presence of buried chargeable bodies such as disseminated copper-gold porphyry mineralisation will enable the company to ascertain an approximate scale of any copper-gold anomalism located within the targets in advance of commencing a drilling campaign during the 2020/21 field season.
A shallow soil sampling program is also planned to test for gold and platinum mineralisation at Target C, with a shallow drilling program proposed for the cobalt-nickel-scandium Target D.
