Middle Island Resources has named Roland Bartsch, a geologist with 35 years’ experience, as its new CEO. The industry veteran will lead the company’s copper-gold hunt at its flagship Barkly project in Australia’s Northern Territory.
With its maiden drilling program at Barkly delivering all the trademarks of an iron oxide-copper-gold (IOCG)-style mineralisation, the company has plucked a CEO with a background of developing and managing similar projects.
Mr Bartsch arrives at Middle Island having been the vice president and Australian manager for Copper Mountain Mining, where he managed the full spectrum of exploration and pre-development issues of its Mt Isa Inlier copper-gold projects in Queensland, including its Eva copper project.
The Eva project is a cluster of IOCG deposits, which Bartsch managed from early assessment right through to a shovel-ready operation. It is this successful history with IOCG mineralisation which Middle Island sees as critical to its development.
Middle Island Resources executive director Brad Marwood said: “MDI have been seeking a highly skilled, successful manager to run the Barkly Tablelands exploration and drive the business. Roland ticks all the boxes and comes to us fresh after his success with the Eva Copper Project. We are very pleased to have secured the services of Roland on a full-time basis and excited by the prospectivity of the MDI future at Barkly.”
Middle Island’s Barkly super-project comprises 11 granted exploration licence applications covering 4343.49 square kilometres and five pending applications covering a further 1190.1 sq km within the NT’s Barkly region.
The company plunged four diamond drill holes into its Crosswinds prospect at the project last year, seeking the deep-seated source of outcropping copper oxide mineralisation that yielded portable XRF readings of between 24.8 per cent and an astounding 76.2 per cent copper.
Middle Island hailed its maiden drilling program a technical success after all four holes intersected broad zones of pyrite, hematite and silica alteration. Alteration mineral assemblage, along with the observed geology, is a key signature of the coveted IOCG deposits.
Additionally, all holes perforated the base of the overlying Georgina Basin sediments and hit the targeted prospective Helen Springs Volcanics and Alroy formation basement.
While the company intersected IOCG-style alteration, ultimately there was an absence of targeted sulphides. However, management believes it may have intersected the outer edges of the mineral deposition.
Middle Island’s Crosswinds prospect sits a mere 5km south of Emmerson Resources’ high-grade Hermitage discovery that returned a stunning 116m hit going 3.38 per cent copper and 0.88 grams per tonne gold in 2021. More recently, Emerson coughed up an additional 94.4m grading 2.74 per cent copper, 5.58g/t gold, 17.88g/t silver and 0.44 per cent bismuth from 85m.
In terms of Middle Island’s target, IOCG deposits are highly sought-after mineral systems due to their size, multi-commodities and potentially high metal content. Australia has two major IOCG regions of global significance - the Olympic IOCG province along the eastern margin of the Gawler Craton in South Australia and the Cloncurry district in the eastern Mount Isa Inlier of north-west Queensland.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au
By Steve Kaless
