Austral Resources Australia Ltd has commenced an extensive exploration programme with a focus on drilling historical and new prospects to grow the company’s copper (Cu) resource base, and to extend Austral’s mine life.
With a budget of AU$10M over the next 12 months for exploration and drilling, the team will maximise the integration and interpretation of the extensive historical datasets. The planned drilling will focus on high priority brownfield exploration targets to grow Austral’s current JORC Mineral Resource Estimate (420kt of contained copper).
Steve Tambanis, Austral’s Chief Executive Officer commented:
“Our exploration team has wasted no time reviewing a massive historic dataset, getting on the ground, and selecting priority targets for follow up resource estimate work – some of which are drill ready. Focussing on Cu oxides, they have selected a combination of brownfield and greenfield targets for the initial drill programme.
“There are a number of lower grade oxide resources near our Mt Kelly processing facility that were not progressed a decade ago due to lower Cu prices. We are looking at the potential of these to deliver short term feed to supplement Anthill ore to our Mt Kelly plant. Our clear objective here is to extend our current four-year mine life through discovery and by commercialising our 420,000t contained Cu resource base.
“The exploration team has the resourcing to concurrently work on 2-3 prospects, so we expect steady reporting of results and news flow from May onwards.
In addition to the existing 1,340km2 of EPMs, the company has lodged 800km2 of adjacent applications.
“We are also preparing to collect diamond core samples at Flying Horse to provide fresh ore samples for a metallurgical test work programme. This will determine if our sulphide ore is amenable to a newly developed heap leach sulphide process that shows promising results in a North American copper mine. This has transformational potential for AR1 if we can treat sulphide Cu ore at our existing Mt Kelly oxide plant.
“We look forward to further updating shareholders as we build Cu production from Anthill and scaleup exploration and development activities.”