Kristie Batten: Firetail expands Americas exploration strategy with US gold deal

News.com.au

5 hours ago

One of Australia's top mining journalists, Kristie Batten writes for Stockhead every week in her regular column placing a watchful eye on the movers and shakers of the small cap resources scene.
The team at Firetail Resources (ASX:FTL) are heading back to their roots with the acquisition of two high-grade gold projects.
Firetail managing director Glenn Poole is an experienced geologist who has worked for gold miners including Northern Star Resources (ASX:NST) while director and fellow Northern Star alumni Simon Lawson is best known for leading high-grade gold explorer Spartan Resources (ASX:SPR).
A week ago, Firetail announced options to acquire two high-grade gold projects in the US, sending the stock up since ~10%.
Poole said the company had been looking for additional assets in the Americas for some time.
The combination of the board's experience in gold and wanting to take advantage of the record gold price made the company's latest move a no-brainer.
Options over the two projects cost $3.7 million, comprising $900,000 in cash and the rest in shares.
Firetail can acquire up to 80% of the Excelsior Springs gold-silver project in Nevada by spending US$5 million on exploration over the next five years.
'In Nevada, it's similar to what we see in Western Australia or even on the east coast of huge gold deposits within a localised trend,' Poole said.
That trend is the plus-40 million ounce Walker Lane tectonic zone, which hosts AngloGold Ashanti's 15.4Moz North Bullfrog and Arthur projects and Kinross Gold's 200,000 ounce per annum Round Mountain mine.
Excelsior Springs' Buster mine produced 19,200oz at 41 grams per tonne gold from shallow underground workings.
More recent exploration has defined a target area with a strike length of 3.5km and 200-400m wide.
Previous drilling has returned results including:
8m at 4g/t gold from 39.6m, including 6.1m at 16.3g/t gold
5m at 5.35g/t gold from 41.2m, including 10.7m at 15.99g/t gold; and
32m at 2.45g/t gold from 44.2m, including 6.1m at 10g/t gold.
'There's drilling that proves that there's gold from surface … it's still very shallow, in terms of its drill testing,' Poole said.
Poole said permitting in Nevada was reasonably fast and the company planned to kick off an initial reverse circulation drilling program to test for extensions of known mineralisation as soon as possible.
'It's just deciding where to put the drill holes,' he said.
'There's such a broad trend and amazing targets.'
The project also presents the opportunity for a silver discovery, just as the price has started to move. Silver eclipsed its long-term resistance at US$35/oz on Friday, now fetching US$36/oz.
Until the start of 2024, the precious metal had been trapped around US$20/oz for years.
Recent rock chip sampling on the eastern side of the project returned a result of 6630g/t silver in an undrilled area.
Finding a unicorn
Firetail also has an option to acquire 100% of the Bella project in South Dakota.
The underexplored project is earlier stage than Excelsior Springs but sits just 20km from the historic Homestake mine, which produced 42Moz of gold.
Poole likened the project to a 'geological unicorn'.
The claims cover 110km of banded iron formation, which is the main host of gold in the district.
The project has only had limited previous drilling, focused on the Standby mine.
Results included 3.1m at 10.29g/t gold from 730.9m, 14m at 2.47g/t gold from 158.5m and 6.1m at 2.81g/t gold from 172.5m.
Standby also returned a high-grade pit wall sample of 12.2m at 46.62g/t gold, including 1.5m at 343g/t gold.
Other prospects have returned channel samples of up to 16g/t gold.
Firetail will launch its own mapping, sampling and modelling program once the deal is completed.
'There'll be a bit more work to decide which projects get the attention here,' Poole said.
Copper still a focus
Firetail has previously been focused on copper and owns the Skyline project in Newfoundland, Canada, and the Picha project in Peru.
Skyline produced around 100,000 tonnes grading 3-12% copper, 7% zinc and 1-3oz per tonne of silver via a small underground mine between 1898 and 1913 but has seen limited exploration since.
Firetail has a 3D ground-based induced polarisation survey underway at Skyline and is hoping to receive the results in the next eight weeks.
That will define targets for the next round of diamond drilling.
Meanwhile, the Picha project was selected by BHP as one of just eight global exploration projects to participate in its 2025 Xplor exploration accelerator program.
The program provides participants with US$500,000 in non-dilutive funding, as well as technical support from BHP.
Poole said the Xplor program was going well for Firetail.
'We're meeting up with them again at the start of July for another boot camp,' he said.
'I was already excited by what we knew before this program and it's just taken leaps and bounds since then.'