Break it Down: Tesoro makes golden memorandum to light up El Zorro
Tylah Tully looks at a Tesoro Gold MoU to power up a cost-effective gold operation in an understated Chilean jurisdiction.
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News.com.au
15 hours ago
- News.com.au
Resources Top 5: Coal player fuels rare gains as silver and gold stocks roll out the drill rigs
Australian Pacific Coal heads our list today for sustained daily gains Inaugural diamond drilling at the Elizabeth Hill project in Western Australia's Pilbara region struck shallow, high-grade silver An 8100m drill program is underway across the Tin Can trend at the Newman project of Peregrine Gold Your standout resources stocks for Wednesday, June 11, 2025. Australian Pacific Coal (ASX:AQC) Australian Pacific Coal is making progress after resuming underground mining at the Dartbrook Coal Mine in the Hunter Valley of NSW earlier this year following a restart program in 2024. Shares lifted 21.88% to a daily high of 7.8c and closed at 7.1c. On June 2 the company advised that it is well on the way to meeting the final two Conditions Subsequent (CS) of a senior secured finance facility with Vitol Asia Pte Ltd for Dartbrook. One remaining CS requires the project to rail 20,000 tonnes of produced coal in a consecutive 30-day period. The Dartbrook JV recently commenced a washed coal railing, with further railings continuing whilst the wash plant nears completion of its recommissioning. The JV has contracts in-place to rail the required tonnage and remains focused on commencing exports of its high-quality thermal coal product in the near future once more steady-state production is reached. There is about 150,000 tonnes of ROM coal stockpiled. The other CS outstanding relates to the registration of the Trepang Lease with the NSW Land Registry Service, which is under way. AQC said the outstanding matters were largely administrative and it had no reason to believe that they would not be satisfied in due course. Located about 10km northwest of Muswellbrook, Dartbrook has access to world-class infrastructure, a skilled workforce and support industries utilised by major mining companies in the region. Vitol has expressed its continued support and commitment towards the project, as evidenced by the recent increase in funding it made available to the project of US$4.2 million on May 30, 2025. West Coast Silver (ASX:WCE) Increasing safe haven investment demand along with growing demand for industrial uses, including solar panels, has seen silver break the back of long-term resistance at US$35/oz and currently trading at around US$36.40 (~A$55.86). These factors are leading to increasing supply deficits and seeing interest in silver producers, developers and explorers steadily improve. Among them are West Coast Silver which hit a new 12-month high of 10.5c in morning trading before closing lower at 8.9c after inaugural diamond drilling at its Elizabeth Hill project in Western Australia's Pilbara region struck shallow, high-grade silver. Notable preliminary results from the first two diamond holes include 2m at 6951g/t silver from a down-hole depth of 27m in the first hole, 25WCDD001, and 12m at 153g/t silver from the surface in the second hole, 25WWCDD002. Anomalous lead, zinc and copper values were also returned from these holes, which were selected to test the potential for shallow, high-grade mineralisation. While the results are based on portable XRF readings and assays are awaited, they indicate that the drill program has achieved its objectives. Should a significant silver resource be defined, West Coast Silver could have a clear line to production given that Elizabeth Hill is an historical mine that only needed low-cost gravity separation to recover native silver. Systematic core logging is underway to improve the company's understanding of Elizabeth Hill while regional soil samples have been sent to the laboratory for assessment before being used to help define the next steps. 'We are extremely pleased with this exceptional start to our maiden drill program,' executive chairman Bruce Garlick said. 'To intersect high-grade silver from surface in our first two holes is a tremendous result and validates our belief in the near-surface potential at Elizabeth Hill. 'The grades seen in 25WCDD001 are particularly encouraging and point to a strong future for the project.' Elizabeth Hill is one of Australia's high-grade silver projects and has a proven history with 1.2Moz of silver produced from just 16,830t of ore at a head grade of 2,194g/t. This was obtained during 12 months of production before the mining operation ceased in 2000 due to low silver prices of around US$5/oz. Encouragingly for WCE, the previous operations had a simplistic processing technique with native silver recovered via low-cost gravity separation. Untapped potential remains in the ground with the deposit open at depth while a recent consolidation of the land package offers potential to discover more Elizabeth Hill style deposits. Through the consolidation of the surrounding land packages into a single contiguous 180km2 package, significant exploration and growth potential exists both near mine and regionally. This land package holds a significant portion of the Munni Munni fault system which is considered prospective for Elizabeth Hill look-a-like silver deposits. The project is on a mining lease in a Tier-1 mining jurisdiction and with a potential processing option at the nearby Radio Hill site. Peregrine Gold (ASX:PGD) Any Western Australian explorer with links to Mark Creasy attracts more attention than most others owing to the legendary prospector's high success rate. One such company is Peregrine Gold which has Creasy as its top backer while former Azure Minerals chairman Brian Thomas is also on board as non-executive chairman. Adding further to these credentials is technical director George Merhi, who has a history of success as exploration manager for the Creasy Group and Novo Resources, particularly in the Pilbara region. It is little wonder then that Peregrine was 14.29% higher at 16c after launching an 8100m drill program across the Tin Can trend at the Newman gold project in the Pilbara. After landing all necessary approvals, the aircore program is underway testing the extent of an open 1km-long gold and arsenic anomaly identified from geochemical sampling. This includes areas with 'subtle' chargeability anomalies identified through Induced Polarisation, which may indicate the presence of sulphide mineralisation. The 81-hole aircore program will average around 100m per hole with results expected in the next quarter. During the drilling Peregrine will test for extensions to the Tin Can West discovery, which previously returned 4m at 9g/t gold from 12m along with 8m at 8.33g/t from 56m, 8m at 6.53g/t from 48m, 4m at 11.35g/t from 28m and 4m at 10.82g/t from 32m. After wrapping up the Tin Can program, the company expects to begin initial aircore drilling at the Epithermal prospect, subject to a final review of survey results. 'We are excited to commence aircore drilling at Tin Can,' Peregrine's technical director George Merhi said. 'The team is eager to see what this round of drilling will discover as we have a compelling fertile target of substantial scale which has already generated high-grade gold mineralisation as evidenced by prior drilling results. 'Following the drilling at Tin Can we can look forward to commencing first phase aircore drilling at the Epithermal prospect.' The Newman gold project spans 1900km2, about 30km southwest of Newman. Asian Battery Metals (ASX:AZ9) Asian Battery Metals has enhanced its standing in Mongolia on confirming high-grade mineralisation at the Oval copper-nickel discovery with shares climbing 10.35% to a daily high of 3.2c before retreating to 2.7c. The Oval is one of 30 promising targets identified at the Yambat project, which covers 106.07km2 in the north-central part of Gobi-Altai Province. Previous drill hole OVD0213 ranked among the highest-grade intercepts drilled in recent years delivering grades of 6.08% copper and 3.19% nickel over 8.8m. And now, assays from phase 3 drilling have flagged a massive sulphide intercept in hole OVD034 which correlates well with previous results of 1.3m at 4.70% Cu, 3.65% Ni, 1.19g/t E3 (gold-platinum-palladium) and 0.12% cobalt from 79.6m. Hole OVD033 confirmed strong mineralisation down-dip from the phase 1 standout hole OVD0211 with 27.7m at 1.36% Cu, 0.86% Ni, 0.44 g/t E3 and 0.04% Co from 92.3m and 6.7m at 1.17% Cu and 0.96% Ni from 159.8m. Hole OVD032 intersected deeper, high-tenor sulphides, including 0.5m at 1.39% Cu, 1.91% Ni, 0.62g/t E3 and 0.07% Co from 293.7m. Asian Battery Metals (ASX:AZ9) said the results confirmed Oval as a new magmatic mafic intrusion related copper-nickel sulphide system in southwestern Mongolia. Visual logging of recent holes OVD036 and OVD0404 has indicated further strong intervals of massive sulphides, suggesting the system remains potentially open along strike and at depth. Additional assay results from these holes are expected in late June. The plan now is to start a ground-based EM survey later this month to guide follow-up drilling and test for deeper feeder zones. Ordell Minerals (ASX:ORD) (Up on no news) As drilling continues at the Barimaia gold project in the Murchison region of WA, Ordell Minerals is awaiting first results with bated breath, as are investors who sent shares up as much as 17.02% to 55c before closing at 49.5c. A multi-pronged, 5000m campaign is targeting extensions and new discoveries within the expanded 7km-long Barimaia Intrusion. First pass reverse circulation (RC) drilling is targeting discovery opportunities outlined by recent aircore drilling along strike from the 2.5km zone of mineralisation defined at the McNabs and McNabs East prospects. The company expects diamond drilling to start in the first half of June. Extensions to the host granodiorite intrusion identified by recent aircore drilling will also be systematically followed up in the second half of 2025. The flagship Barimaia project represents an advanced exploration project with significant historical drilling results. Ordell acquired an 80.3% interest in Barimaia from Genesis Minerals (ASX:GMD), which is now a major shareholder of Ordell with an 8% shareholding. Barimaia, which was never systematically explored due to Genesis' strategic focus on its assets in the Leonora region, is in a Tier-1 mining jurisdiction in proximity to several gold processing plants and adjacent to Ramelius Resources' Mt Magnet mill. Ordell's exploration at Barimaia is targeting new discoveries of a similar style to the Eridanus deposit, which forms part of Ramelius' Mt Magnet operations. Eridanus is ~6km northwest of Barimaia and hosts a resource of 21Mt at 1.7g/t Au for 1.2Moz of contained gold, with an additional +300,000oz already mined from the open pit.
News.com.au
a day ago
- News.com.au
Paterson Province remains underexplored despite its gold and copper riches
Paterson Province is a highly prospective region with big endowments of gold and copper Antipa Minerals has defined a significant resource at its Minyari Dome project and plans a standalone development Greatland Gold is looking to provide toll treatment services at its Telfer processing plant The Paterson Province covers around 30,000km2 to the east of the Hamersley Basin and southwest of the Canning Basin is one of the great mineral provinces in Australia, hosting some truly significant tier one projects such as Telfer and Nifty. Telfer in particular has been a real drawcard with a stupendous pre-mining inventory of 32Moz of gold, a million tonnes of copper and about 25Moz of silver. However, the region's quirks – including a relatively thick layer of cover in many parts – meant that other than Telfer and Nifty, which were discovered between 1972 and 1985 due to outcropping mineralisation, it remained largely neglected since the mid 1980s. Antipa Minerals (ASX:AZY) managing director Roger Mason told Stockhead the company started pegging ground in the region after realising that geophysical and geochemical surface exploration techniques had come a long way since the mid-80s. 'For example, electrical, geophysical survey techniques that they were using in the mid 80s would have been 1970s technology,' he noted. 'So there was an opportunity in the region to apply state of the art geophysical and surface geochemical techniques to see through the cover to discover new ore bodies. And basically that's what happened.' This is clearly highlighted by the discovery of 20Moz of gold, nearly 4Mt of copper and about 60Moz of silver in the last eight years or so under cover as shallow as 10m and up to 430m at the major Havieron project. Mason believes this trend will continue as the Paterson is a very immature province from an exploration perspective, saying that material re-invigoration of exploration has only occurred in the last decade or so. 'The giant deposits will continue to be discovered and then a number of smaller multi-million ounce, but tier two and tier three discoveries will be made over the next several decades,' he added. First mover advantage Antipa itself has benefitted from being one of the first companies to seize on opportunities in the Paterson Province while it was still relatively unloved. Mason said this allowed the company to put together ground in the shallowly covered part of the province. This is important as there are significant parts that are under very deep cover that makes it challenging to explore and develop mines. Its landholding of 4100km2 has proven rich enough for its work to culminate in a recently updated resource of 2.5Moz of gold equivalent – including 84,000t copper, 666,000oz silver and 13,000t cobalt – at its flagship Minyari Dome project. 'It's a significant resource. We had a scoping study out on the previous resource last October which showed very positive economics for a plus 10-year project mining one and a half million ounces of gold and producing 130,000ozpa for the first 10 years of project life,' Mason said. 'The economics were very strong for that project despite using a gold price of A$3000/oz for that study as the base case and it had an NPV at a 7% discount of over $830m pre-tax. 'It was a very positive outcome and so the Antipa board is moving forward with a pre-feasibility study.' The resource is also significant enough that the company is planning a standalone development for Minyari Dome. While the company will have to work through the usual permitting process in terms of environmental and Native Title considerations and stakeholders, it doesn't other have any particular hurdles towards going standalone in the region. Minyari Dome benefits from roads in the area, a gas pipeline running adjacent to the west and a BP-led joint venture building a significant green energy plant near Winu. Mason adds the company is pushing ahead with a very aggressive and multi-pronged strategy which is to complete the PFS and de-risk the Minyari standalone development opportunity. 'Currently, we've got four rigs in the area. We're drilling to expand the existing mineral resource, which will potentially expand the development life,' he said. 'We have an aggressive discovery-focused program in play as well, testing a range of priority gold targets. 'We've got three strings to the strategy bow, all of which are being sort of simultaneously progressed, and we're fully funded to complete all of those programs.' Not music to all ears While Antipa's plans to pursue a standalone development for Minyari Dome certainly make sense for a project of its scale, it does take away one of the potential planks that UK-based Greatland Gold might have been hoping to build its toll treating plans on. Greatland had acquired Newmont's assets in the region – namely the Telfer gold-copper miner and related assets – for US$475m in December 2024, giving it control over Australia's third largest gold-copper processing facility. This has the capacity to process between 20 million and 22 million tonnes of material though the UK producer has flagged that it is planning to use just part of this capacity and has promoted the potential for Telfer to be a processing hub using a hub and spoke strategy. While the removal of Minyari Dome from consideration does put some doubt into the viability of this plan, there are other junior companies operating in the region that might be amendable to a toll treatment strategy. One company is Encounter Resources (ASX:ENR), which regained full control of its Yeneena copper project in late May 2025 after IGO (ASX:IGO) withdrew from their joint venture. Yeneena is a large-scale copper-cobalt project covering +1450km2 of ground in the Paterson Province about 60km southwest of Telfer. It benefitted from some $15m in exploration expenditure – including diamond and aircore drilling, and regional-scale geological, geochemical and geophysical surveys from IGO over the six-year farm-in that generated an extensive dataset. The company plans to assess this dataset to refine and prioritise the next phase of exploration, which could include the potential for depth extensions to the BM1 high-grade copper oxide discovery and testing the large copper leakage anomaly identified at BM5. Previous drilling at BM1 had returned assays such as 20m grading 2% copper from a down-hole depth of 22m, 10m at 6.8% copper from 32m, and 18m at 3.2% copper from 32m. St George Mining (ASX:SGQ) also holds ground in the Paterson Province with its project covering more than 35km of prospective stratigraphy, with potential similarities to the stratigraphy that hosts the mineralisation at Winu, Nifty and Telfer. Drilling by the company has confirmed the presence of chalcopyrite and metasediments, the lithology known to host base metal mineralisation in the Paterson region.
News.com.au
a day ago
- News.com.au
Broken Hill is being put back on the map by this emerging miner
Broken Hill Mines is planning a listing next month via a reverse takeover of Coolabah Metals It will bring the asset on which BHP was founded back to Australian retail investors for the first time in decades BHM head honcho Partick Walta says Broken Hill has years of life still in it On September 5, 1883, a German-born boundary rider known as Charles Rasp pegged the first block on what became known as the Broken Hill. Originally thought to be a mountain of tin, the intuition of the enterprising Kraut finally crystallised into revelation with the discovery of a rich vein of silver two years later. The result was the formation of BHP (ASX:BHP), now the world's richest mining company after trading in its New South Wales roots for iron ore in the Pilbara and copper in Chile. Yet what became of that original line of lode? It may surprise many investors to know it continues to be tapped to this day at the aptly named Rasp mine. But the project has been hidden in the bowels of Japanese zinc refiner Toho Zinc since 2010. As Toho sought to exit the Aussie mining business, with the 200 miners still working the operation facing the bread line, a white knight emerged. The reimagined Broken Hill Mines, led by Patrick Walta – a metallurgist who almost a decade ago breathed new life into the Century zinc mine in Queensland – acquired the distressed assets in October 2024. It plans to relist through the shell of Coolabah Metals in a reverse float that will include the injection of $15-20 million in fresh capital from investors. Following the launch of a replacement prospectus last Monday chasing that quantum at 35c per share, Walta says the miner has been swamped with interest. Much of it has come from investors drawn to the romance of Broken Hill. " It's pretty cool being able to say you're operating the mine that started BHP. We've literally got the first shaft that was sunk," Walta told Stockhead after the launch of the replacement prospectus this month. " Every single person you talk to says, 'my granddad worked there', or 'my auntie or my uncle was associated with Broken Hill'. " Everyone in the mining community has a history with Broken Hill. "It's such a revered mining town, and the mines there are so well known." The other major producer in the region is the Broken Hill operations mined by Chinese-owned Perilya. " Broken Hill as an orebody has been effectively owned by private Asian interests for a good couple of decades," Walta said. "And there's a lot of patriotism there where they see this as really a story of national significance as much as anything else, about Broken Hill getting back into Aussie hands, being publicly listed, being transparent." Multi-generational Broken Hill has many of the hallmarks of other great mining hubs that have been consolidated by Australian miners in recent decades. The Super Pit at one point had a potential three years in front of it under North American majors Newmont Corporation (ASX:NEM) and Barrick before its acquisition by Northern Star Resources (ASX:NST). Now they are talking about Kalgoorlie's Golden Mile running well beyond the lifespan of anyone prospecting its workings. Cobar's CSA copper mine is heading back into international hands, being acquired by Harmony Gold in a $1.6bn deal after MAC Copper (ASX:MAC) pried it from the labyrinthine portfolio of Glencore. Now BHM is looking revitalise an underinvested asset by not just keeping the operations going but consolidating some of the key deposits around the region. "People are able to actually see what's going on there and it's drawing people back to the town as well," Walta said. "They're not seeing it as a mine that's about to shut down, they're seeing as a potential generational asset that can run for multiple decades. "There's a great saying in Broken Hill that the Broken Hill orebody has had an eight-year mine life since 1885," he added. "It's one of those classic, super orebodies where you keep drilling it, you keep investing, you keep giving it the love and it keeps returning." " The orebody currently stands (historically) at 300 million tonnes at 15% zinc and lead and 300g/t silver. " When Charles Rasp came across it as a rocky outcrop in 1883, it obviously wasn't a 300 million tonne orebody. " So it's had consistent discovery and growth over that 140-year life and there's no reason why that doesn't continue on." Scaling up Currently, the mine produces in the order of 25,000tpa of zinc equivalent metal. But it doesn't take long to figure out that there's plenty of opportunities to improve the outlook. Despite the Rasp plant's 750,000tpa capacity, the project has been campaign milled since 2020 and ore feed grades are currently around 6% ZnEq. There are immediate opportunities to upgrade that. "We bought an operating mine, a going concern, we've got 120 staff on day one and a hungry plant," Walta said. "The whole philosophy here is about utilisation of sunk capital. We have this beautiful plant that's really had 500 million bucks spent on it over the years and it's only about 12 years old. " It is only fed by one orebody and it's a relatively low-grade ore body by Broken Hill standards." That ore source – Western Mineralisation – runs at around 8.2% ZnEq, including 4.8% zinc, 3.1% lead and 38g/t silver. Yet the Main Lode grades an impressive 17.7% ZnEq, including some 870,000t of ore at 7.8% zinc, 7.6% lead and 151.7g/t silver. Walta says the mine still made $20 million in operating cashflow last year with a plant running at around 40% of its total capacity. When the Main Lode comes online it will introduce not just more ore, but ore running at 2.5x the grade. Not resting on its laurels, BHM has also struck a deal to share 70% of the profits by exploring and developing the Pinnacles mine some 15km to the southwest. Pinnacles is a true artefact, one of the last major operations in Australia to be run by a local family. First pegged in 1884, the Williams clan has mined the deposit since 1954, aided by a 30,000tpa processing plant. It hosts close to 6Mt of ore in its open pit and underground deposits at a 10.88% ZnEq grade. Drilling is expected to take place over the next two years to bring the mine up to commercial standards before tapping the rich stuff underground in 2027, though an open pit could be expanded to complement production from Rasp before then. "What they've done is nothing short of amazing. They've built up their own operation just through the sweat off their own back," Walta said. " They have a 40m deep open pit, four underground levels down to about 100m. They built their own processing plant. " No engineers, no consultants. This is hand-built stuff. It's very small by corporate standards, it's about 30,000 tonnes per annum. " We've managed to team up with the Williams family, we've got a 70-30 profit share JV over the Pinnacles mine with them, so ultimately we want to get Pinnacles back up and running." Opportunity beckons The company is aiming to return to listing under its new name next month, with demand for the IPO said to have run as much as three times the available shares on offer. Once listed the market cap will run at a pro forma $89-94 million. That's potentially bargain barrel material when similar base metals producers are taken into account. Polymetals Resources (ASX:POL), for instance, which is in the process of commissioning the Endeavor silver and zinc near Cobar has run ~150% higher over the past year to a market cap of ~$210m. Endeavor is an interesting comparison to Broken Hill, being the other NSW mine Toho Zinc acquired in its 2010 takeover of CBH Resources. "When you look at our value proposition, we're at $95m as a comp, Poly's at $200m, Aurelia Metals (ASX:AMI) is at $500, Develop Global's (ASX:DVP) at $1bn. "They've all got very good reasons why they're at those levels. (But) you don't have to do a lot more research to go, there's a bit of value here. "And we deliberately priced it that way. We wanted early stage investors to capture value and we obviously want it to perform well." There's a lot to like in the company's markets as well. Silver recently broke the back of long-term resistance at US$35/oz and is now worth US$36.50/oz, powered by investment demand and close to five years of deficits due to stagnant mine supply and its increasing use in solar panels. Zinc and lead may not have accelerated like copper, lithium, cobalt and rare earths did during the battery metals boom. But they remain large stable markets trading at levels that offer solid and predictable returns for operators of BHM's scale. Walta says the mix of industrial and precious metals also means the mine naturally hedges against different market conditions. "Zinc is a 70 or 80 billion dollar a year industry, lead's a 60 billion dollar a year industry," he said. " These are established industries of commodities that are essentially part of the makeup of every single person's life every day."
