Mineral exploration company, Kairos Minerals has put its foot on 479 square kilometres of tenure in the celebrated Pilbara region of Western Australia to swell its landholding in the district to a whopping 2,026 square kilometres. The company says the new exploration licence applications are prospective for lithium pegmatite discoveries and intrusion-related gold mineralisation similar to De Grey’s world-class Hemi discovery in the region.
The new acreage adds to the company’s 100 per cent owned Pilbara gold project which already takes in multiple exploration licences scattered across the Pilbara.
Since acquiring the Mt York project in 2016, Kairos has defined an 873,500-ounce gold resource base made up of three separate deposits, including the dominant 697,000-ounce Mt York namesake deposit.
Some 25 kilometres east of Mt York, one new licence application has been added to Kairos’ existing Lalla Rookh tenure in the Pilbara.
Including the new addition, Lalla Rookh now consists of four non-adjoining tenements.
Kairos management says the new Lalla Rookh licence hosts ultramafic rocks prospective for gold and base metal mineralisation. Curiously, the Lalla Rookh historical gold mine lies just 2km from the new tenement.
The other three tenements at Lalla Rookh are prospective for both lithium-caesium-tantalum pegmatites and intrusion-related gold mineralisation, according to the company.
Interestingly, the Lalla Rookh acreage lies only 75km from De Grey mining’s spectacular intrusion-related Hemi gold discovery.
De Grey, with a market capitalisation that clocks in now at more than $1.2 billion, has been the talk of the town since announcing the 6.8-million-ounce mega gold discovery.
About 75km further to the north-east, Kairos has applied for two exploration licences covering 376.6 square kilometres to fashion the newly named ‘Rocklea’ tenure.
The under explored Rocklea area also shows potential for lithium-caesium-tantalum pegmatites and intrusion-related gold mineralisation, according to Kairos.
It says the north-west portion of Rocklea takes in the same stratigraphy that hosts the nearby Highway nickel, copper and cobalt deposit and BHP’s historical Mt Goldsworthy iron ore mine.
Kairos Minerals Executive Chairman, Terry Topping said:“The new licence applications will increase our overall ground-holdings by 30% to over 2,000 square kilometres, making us one of the largest land-holders in the central and east Pilbara with ground situated across a number of important strategic geological structures…
This is another demonstration of our commitment as a long-term strategic explorer in the Pilbara region and further strengthens our deep pipeline of exploration opportunities. We look forward to the commencement of initial exploration activities including an airborne magnetic and radiometric survey.”
Kairos’ wholly owned Pilbara gold project lies some 100km south of Port Hedland. Its central hub of tenements is located in the “world-class” Pilgangoora district, adjacent to ASX-listed Pilbara Minerals’ globally significant Pilgangoora lithium project.
The Pilgangoora ore body is one of the largest hard rock lithium deposits in the world where a whopping 309 million tonne resource going 1.14 per cent lithium oxide has been defined.
Pilbara Minerals, with a market capitalisation of about $6 billion, commenced commercial production at the project in 2019 and currently churns out about 330,000 tonnes per annum of six per cent lithium oxide spodumene concentrate.
Kairos also appears well placed to makes its own mark in the Pilbara as it continues to snap up ground in one of the best bits of geological real estate in Australia.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au
By Matt Birney
