Having put a circa-50,000 ounce oxide gold resource on the table at Mt Dimer in Western Australia in May, Twenty Seven Co is gearing up to chase large-scale copper-gold deposits near Broken Hill on the other side of the country before having a second and third crack this year at a new gold discovery in WA.
CEO Simon Phillips says the company is aiming to stock a development pipeline over the next six months.
The ASX junior spent about five months re-activating Mt Dimer, mined back in the mid-1990s when gold was trading around $500/ounce, through drilling and resource modelling. Its maiden JORC inferred resource of 722,000 tonnes grading 2.1 g/t gold and 3.84 g/t silver for 48,545 ounces of gold and 89,011 ounces of silver sits on a granted mining lease about 100km north-east of Southern Cross and only two hours out of Kalgoorlie.
To the west, Ramelius Resources is trucking 1.8-to-2 g/t dirt from its 280,000-ounce Marda gold deposit down through Bullfinch to its 2.7 million tonne per annum Edna May plant near Westonia.
Ramelius picked up Marda and a then 151,000-ounce mining reserve for $13 million in 2019.
Mr Phillips says Twenty Seven Co will weigh next steps at Mt Dimer, “including assessing our mining and exploration options”, over the next few months. The company could have a lot more on its plate in that time.
It is awaiting results of an extensive shallow auger drill campaign at its Yarbu gold prospect on the Marda-Diemals greenstone belt north of Ramelius’s Marda mine. The 662 holes for nearly 1,000m of samples are expected to deliver valuable geochemical insights into what is seen as an under-explored part of a gold-rich belt.
Past drilling nearby hit 16m grading 3.09 g/t from 88m depth and 10m at 4.44 g/t from 90m.
Historical drill results from Andromeda about 500m from Twenty Seven Co’s Yarbu lease boundary and around the old Clampton gold mine south of Yarbu are part of a body of evidence suggesting the Clampton Fault running through both properties is prospective for Archean shear-hosted gold, according to the company. Twenty Seven Co currently speaks for more than 20km of the fault.
Mr Phillips said: “It’s just soils at this stage, but we’re looking for something that’s going to give us a sniff of some of the Andromeda and Clampton mine hits to follow up on.”
Twenty Seven Co is also eager to get back on the ground at Rover, south-east of Sandstone in WA, where successive drilling and soil sampling programs have produced a string of strong gold results along parallel, linear regional greenstone structures between Sandstone and Menzies to the south.
Drilling at the Creasy 1 and Harmonic prospects has returned 15m at 3.8g/t from 49m, including 1m at 54g/t, at Creasy 1 and near-surface hits such as 17m at 1g/t, including 1m at 3.7g/t and 15m grading 1g/t, including 3m at 4.4g/t at Harmonic.
Twenty Seven Co went back and found “the largest and highest magnitude gold soil anomalies defined to date” at Rover in three areas about 10km along strike to the northwest of Creasy 1 and Harmonic. A 1.2km-long anomaly at Blue Hills with an exceptional peak value of 1,150 parts per billion gold – more than a gram per tonne gold – also had strong values for pathfinder metals such as arsenic and copper. Lesser-grade but still impressive large anomalous zones were also outlined at the Four Corners and Middle Well prospects.
Twenty Seven Co said “none of the new anomalies have ever been drill tested” and they represented “outstanding new exploration opportunities to complement (the company’s) existing gold discoveries at the nearby Creasy 1 and Harmonic prospects”.
Mr Phillips said his exploration team wanted to get a better handle on where all the surface gold might be coming from before embarking on more drilling and is looking to improve on the earlier drill results from Creasy 1 and Harmonic at some stage.
Meanwhile, the package of ground around Broken Hill in terrane seen to be part of the iron oxide copper-gold “super province” extending from the Gawler Craton into north-west Queensland, is beckoning Twenty Seven Co and the drill bit after soil sampling and electromagnetic surveys revealed the “full suite of IOCG indicators” at high-priority targets.
The company has more than 750sq.km of tenure in the Perseus project area west of Broken Hill and at Trident and Midas to the north-east.
Mr Phillips said Twenty Seven Co has outlined “compelling copper and gold drill targets” at the Benco prospect within the 186sq.km Midas project. An induced polarisation, or “IP” survey over Benco has defined numerous chargeable zones including many that were coincident with copper-gold rock-chip anomalies. Assayed rock chips have returned up to 4,160ppm copper, 0.3 g/t gold and 369ppm cobalt.
Twenty Seven Co’s Benco drilling is set to test several geochemical and “robust” shallow IP targets within a 1.6km-long north-east trending corridor.
A planned 15-20 holes with up to 2,500m of drilling at Benco will also test beneath minor copper workings that didn’t previously show up on official records and have never been drill tested.
Mr Phillips said an Olympic Dam-sized iron oxide copper-gold, or “IOCG” elemental fingerprint in Area 1 also demanded attention once the drill rig completes the planned program at Benco.
A seasoned investment professional with 25 years in capital markets who joined Twenty Seven Co earlier this year, Phillips is upbeat about the upcoming drilling in NSW that could change the company’s current course in the same way IOCG exploration success has altered the fortunes of juniors such as Coda Minerals.
Coda’s share price soared earlier this month on news of its Emmie Bluff IOCG discovery in South Australia’s Gawler Craton and the company has a current market value around $88 million.
Twenty Seven Co has about $3m in the bank and is wasting no time getting boots on the ground at the best of its interesting looking line-up of copper and gold targets.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au
By Matt Birney
