Aurum Resources is set to hit the boards at the ASX after an oversubscribed initial public offering of nickel-copper explorer Aldoro Resources’ gold assets. Aurum has raised $5 million to fast track the development of its underexplored gold projects in WA’s East Murchison region. Aurum will prioritise its Penny South gold project that already has some cracking drill results that were inexplicably never followed up.
Aurum is set to pick up three West Australian gold projects from Aldoro that to-date, have not seen much love from Aldoro given the company’s focus on its rapidly developing nickel, copper and platinum group metals assets.
Aurum’s flagship Penny South gold project and the Unaly Hill South project are perched in the prospective east Murchison region within the rich Youanmi gold mining district. The Ryans Find project is slotted into the Watts Hill greenstone belt between Coolgardie and Southern Cross, another well known gold bearing region.
Just a stone’s throw to the north of Penny South is Ramelius Resources’ Penny North project that it paid Spectrum Resources hundreds of millions of dollars for in both cash and stock.
Ramelius is looking to kick the uber-high grade Penny North into production sometime soon. The project houses some 300,000 ounces of gold going an impressive 16.8 grams per tonne gold.
Aurum’s Penny South project is just south of the historic Penny West open pit that was discovered in 1990 and mined as a high-grade open pit from 1990 to 1991. The Penny West pit produced approximately 154,000 tonnes grading 18 g/t gold for 89,000 ounces of gold.
It was ultimately the geology around the mined out Penny West pit that caused Spectrum to go searching for Penny North and it didn’t take long for Spectrum to get Ramelius on the hook after stumbling across Penny North.
Only very minor exploration efforts were conducted around the Penny gold deposits over the years. A long hiatus ensued until Spectrum Metals picked up the ground in 2019 and discovered the Penny North Lode spurring some life back into the area.
Surprisingly Aurum’s Penny South project has seen little historical drilling despite some solid historic gold hits including 2m grading 33.98 g/t gold, 6m grading 1.27 g/t gold and 5m grading 1.11 g/t gold. Much of the historical drilling in the area is considered inefficient by the company with the majority of drill holes reaching less than 40m down hole.
Outcrop is limited in the area with the bulk of the tenements overlain by transported cover, likely hampering historical drill efforts in the 1990s. The geophysical survey potential in the nineties was far inferior to the capabilities of today and outcrop was a near necessity for successful exploration at the time. The transported cover sequence and limited outcrop at Penny South bears a resemblance to the successful Penny West project area according to the company.
Two independent geological consultants have separately assessed the area and both have landed on a similar set of targets that Aurum will now look to exploit. One consultant is the well known Margaret Hawke, who carried out vital work that led to the discovery of Sandfire’s De Grussa copper mine during her PhD studies.
Previous tenement owner, Spectrum, determined that Penny West sat in a magnetic low corridor in mineralisation that was hosted at the contact between an amphibolite and sheared granodiorite units.
A high-resolution ground magnetic survey was recently completed at Penny South that has drawn attention to a 2km prospective strike length of a similar-looking low magnetic response that models the gold mineralisation at the neighbouring Penny West project. Penny South sits in the southern strike extent of the Penny West shear that hosts the high-grade Penny West gold mine in addition to the soon to be producing, Ramelius owned, Penny North.
The recently completed high-resolution ground magnetic survey has revealed a flurry of other targets that have either gone untested or have been poorly tested by historical drilling.
Aurum is in the enviable position of being able to draw from the successful strategies of surrounding and previous explorers in order to laser target its drilling efforts.
A reverse circulation drill rig has already been locked in and is ready to hit the ground running on the maiden drill holes for Aurum. Initially drilling will focus on following up, extending and infilling high-grade gold sniffs intersected by aircore and reverse circulation drilling undertaken by Aldoro in 2020.
On another front, the Ryans Find project is comprised of a single granted exploration license and three exploration license applications. The area was initially explored in the 1970s by Western Mining Corporation and was mostly composed of surface geochemistry sampling with very limited percussion drilling. The area experienced a 20-30 year hiatus and did not undergo any modern-day exploration until the 2000s when nickel occurrences began to pop up, reigniting exploration efforts in the area.
If there is something to be found at Ryan’s Find, it would not be the first time the previously high flying Western Mining left enough mineralisation behind to birth a company.
Following a recent review of Ryans Find, Aurum’s exploration focus has shifted from nickel to gold. Historic gold mines and gold workings are scattered throughout the area providing good supplementary evidence for the shift. Additionally, there is 50km worth of relatively underexplored strike length of greenstone belt that appears to be begging to see a drill bit.
The three pending exploration license applications will be actively pursued with a view to commence exploration on all four tenements once granted.
Aurum’s Unaly Hill South project comprises a single exploration tenement covering approximately 12 square kilometres at the southern end of the Atley complex that is contiguous with Surefire Resources’ Unaly Hill Vanadium project.
The Unaly Hill South tenement contains both Vanadium titanomagnetite and gold exploration targets. The main target area for gold is focussed on the intersection of the Youanmi major regional shear zone that hosts the Penny West gold deposit in addition to numerous others and the Yuinmery shear, also known to host considerable gold mineralisation.
Gold exploration interest has increased in the Youanmi region in recent years. Companies like Rox Resources and Venus metals have been quietly amassing serious in ground ounces and Golden Mile Resources recently picked up the Yuinmery gold project located a short 6km to the south-southeast of Unaly Hill South.
Historical rotary air blast drilling and soil sampling has revealed a number of gold anomalies at Unaly Hill South, however, drill depth is considered inadequate by the company and the area requires follow up deeper drilling to properly test for continuity. An initial ground magnetic survey will be conducted to better understand the structural controls, followed by multi-element geochemical sampling. After results have been interpreted from both methods, a series of drill targets will likely be developed and tested.
Aurum will issue 25 million shares at 20c each to raise a total of $5 million in cash. Aldoro will hold five million shares in Aurum post listing that will be subject to escrow conditions. A $200,000 payment will be made to Aldoro upon listing as reimbursement for expenses associated with developing the projects thus far.
It is curious that two very experienced independent consulting geologists separately singled out a similar suite of targets along strike from the high-grade Penny West pit.
It is also conceivable that they did not receive much love under Aldoro’s roof given that Aldoro appears to be knee-deep in a polymetallic picnic at its various projects that are consistently throwing up solid hits in nickel, copper, lithium, platinum and even Rubidium.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au
