Cyclone Metals has unearthed some stunning quartz and gold nugget specimens up to 712 grams at its wholly owned Nickol River project in WA’s Pilbara region, which begs the question – where are they coming from? The company is hopeful that drilling targets for primary mineralisation will now be quickly generated from them.
In August 2021 in an all scrip deal, Cyclone purchased the Nickol River Gold project that lies only 10 kilometres from Karratha in the Pilbara. The project includes seven granted mining leases and a variety other licences that were previously worked for alluvial gold by former owner Artemis Resources. Two further tenements were acquired in October 2021 and again funded by the issue of shares in Cyclone.
The company has wasted no time applying for permission to undertake an extensive test pitting programme at Nickol River. The work, combined with sub-audio magnetic survey results, will guide a targeted drilling programme, with 18 test pits measuring 20 metres by 10m to be excavated.
Results from the very first test pit recovered a number of beautiful gold-in-quartz specimen nuggets and the company says the nuggets and the vein gold indicates primary gold is the potential source of the eluvial gold mined from the area over the past 140 years.
Cyclone has interests in several exploration and mining projects and companies, with exposure to copper, gold, iron ore, lithium, rare earths, uranium and lead-silver-zinc assets in Australia, Europe, Africa and South America.
Ideally the company has sought to retain long-term exposure to investments through a production royalty or equity interest. Where projects are converted to cash, Cyclone says it intends to distribute surplus cash to shareholders.
The company has an exploration project arm and an investment arm. Key exploration interests include the wholly owned WA projects at Nickol River in the Pilbara region and the Yalardy rare earth project, a 20 per cent interest in the Wee MacGregor copper project near Mt Isa QLD and iron ore projects in Sierra Leone.
Investments include a 16.97 per cent interest in ASX listed CuFe Limited and 18.82 per cent of International Goldfields Limited, an unlisted gold company with projects in Australia, Cote d’Ivoire and Brazil. Smaller ASX listed investments include 5.13 per cent of uranium focussed Cauldron Energy and 6.25 per cent of European Lithium that has Austrian lithium projects.
Cyclone Metals Chairman, Terry Donnelly said: “The recovery of quartz gold in the test pits is fantastic news for the Company. We can collate all the data and design a suitable drilling program to commence as soon as practicable.”
At the Yalardy rare earths project in the Carnavon basin of WA, the company holds tenements covering 914.5 square kilometres. Gravity surveys have identified anomalies that it says could be buried diatreme structures with similar dimensions to the spectacularly rich world class Mount Weld rare earths deposit. Sampling has identified two rare earth element anomalies in locations over the possible buried diatreme structures.
Whilst Cyclone holds only 20 per cent of the Wee MacGregor copper gold project, the company has a pre-emptive right over the remaining 80 per cent.
The nearby Lady Ethleen tenement is wholly owned by Cyclone and is being tested with new mining and processing technology developed by Curtin University known as “GlyLeach”. Cyclone believes the GlyLeach process may unlock the value in a number of copper-gold deposits in the region that remain stranded without a processing plant. Test results are due in the first quarter of 2022.
The Wee MacGregor and Lady Ethleen mines are close to the recent major copper-gold discovery at Nil Desperandum in the Mt Isa district and may benefit from exploration insights from that project.
Cyclone has a smorgasbord of projects covering a full suite of commodities in a number of countries. With gold aplenty at Nickol River, possible repeats of Mt Weld at Yalardy and tenements within spitting distance of a newly announced major copper-gold discovery near Mt Isa, Cyclone is well positioned to create a solid slew of news flow over the coming months.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au
By Matt Birney
