American West to restart Canadian copper-zinc search within weeks
American West Metals will start its 2025 exploration program at the company's Storm copper-zinc project in Canada within weeks, aiming to further define high-grade copper discoveries and rapidly grow its mineral resource potential in the Somerset Island region.
Notably, the company says only a fraction of Storm's 110-kilometre-long fertile copper belt has been tested by a drill bit.
Having recently focused on delivering a preliminary economic assessment for the project, a royalty funding deal and a new strategic alliance, American West now has its 2025 exploration campaign firmly in its sights.
The company has prioritised three large-scale targets, including two within 5km of the Storm deposit, for this season's drilling program. Exploration is slated across the Midway-Storm-Tornado corridor, where previous drilling identified copper for more than 20km.
The Tornado-Blizzard target within that corridor hosts a 3.2km by 1.5km geochemical copper anomaly and two large electromagnetic plates that are yet to be drilled.
At the Midway target, a single historical hole intersected 58 metres of visible copper sulphide.
Meanwhile, Tornado South to the south of Tornado-Blizzard, offers a large structural hotspot presenting a textbook setting for copper mineralisation.
American West also has high-grade discoveries ready for resource definition drilling, which could potentially help the company quickly increase its mineral resource estimates.
It also plans to follow up some tantalising drill intercepts at its Cyclone Deeps deposit, which recorded a headline 10m at 1.2 per cent copper from 311m, including a 0.5m slice at 3.7 per cent copper from 325.5m.
Previous drilling at The Gap returned 20m at 2.3 per cent copper from 28m, including an 8m hit at 5.3 per cent copper from 39.6m, after a strong electromagnetic anomaly was confirmed as a priority copper target.
The company also wants to throw a drill bit into its Cirrus Deeps deposit, which has a high-priority electromagnetic target with a similar geological setting to Cyclone Deeps.
The massive 2200-square-kilometre Storm project currently holds a total resource of 20.6 million tonnes at 1.1 per cent copper and 3.3 grams per tonne (g/t) silver, equating to 228,500t of contained copper and 2.2M ounces of silver. Importantly, less than 5 per cent of its massive 110km prospective stratigraphy has been systematically explored to date.
The majority of American West's work so far has focused on the immediate Storm estimated mineral resource area, however O'Neill said the wider region also offers enormous potential for significant discoveries.
He said the high-priority Midway-Storm-Tornado corridor could add multiple Storm-style discoveries to the company's current tally.
To help get drilling underway, American West has progressed development activities on site, including relatively cheap but important geotechnical, resource, processing and environmental studies for an ongoing pre-feasibility study.
A fourth-quarter sealift operation to the Somerset Island site in Canada's Nunavut province delivered bulk supplies to streamline the logistics, reducing the 2025 program costs by about $4 million. It also meant a shorter lead time to kick-off drilling.
The company will also undertake geophysics work to generate new targets within the area and to build a pipeline of targets for drill testing.
American West's to-do list also includes an airborne mobile magneto-telluric (MMT) survey over Storm and wider areas of interest along Storm's 110km prospective copper horizon.
The survey is designed to show a greater contrast between host rocks and potential accumulations of conductive material, such as metalliferous sulphides, with better spatial and depth resolution.
The company says the method may be useful for occurrences of copper sulphides deeper than 200m at Storm.
The survey is scheduled to start at the same time as camp preparation and opening, allowing for the results to feed into subsequent drill targeting and prioritisation.
Earlier this year, American West entered a partnership and funding agreement with United Kingdom-based trading services company Ocean Partners, which will provide up to 80 per cent of the initial capex for Storm's development in return for a 100 per cent offtake of the project's copper and silver production. The partnership was accompanied by a $2M capital raising by Ocean Partners in April.
The preliminary economic assessment at Storm projected a US$149M (A$232.4M) net present value and 46 per cent post-tax internal rate of return for a 10-year open-pit mining scenario.
The known deposits at Storm remain open and the company is well funded to advance towards production now. Its upcoming exploration plans give American West plenty of scope to grow the mineral resource and expand its mine life once production begins with minimal drilling. It seems there is no shortage of targets to go after in this mineral-rich region.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact:
matt.birney@wanews.com.au
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It's arguably the world's most recognisable mayonnaise bottle. Kewpie's label-less pear shape, aside from an embossed logo and the plastic packaging it comes in, and its bright red lid. It's a stroke of marketing brilliance - many brands would kill to have that kind of recognition worldwide. Its appeal has jumped beyond the supermarket shelf. Where there was once a space reserved for "homemade aioli" or "housemade mayo" on cafe menus, it's this mass-produced mayonnaise that is standing in the spotlight now. And yet, there is no other condiment that has taken hold of the culinary world such as this one. You still see housemade barbecue sauce or homemade tomato relish on menus. And no burger joint is complete without a special sauce. But when it comes to mayonnaise, why do menus make a point of mentioning Kewpie mayo? Kewpie mayonnaise may seem like the newest thing in culinary, a Millennial food obsession that has influenced the hospitality industry. 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This led to the Kewpie dolls that proved very popular in the US and elsewhere. Australia is a country that loves Japan. And we also love our sushi - a food that has boomed in recent decades. You can't go to a food court now without the option of sushi. In fact, we love it so much that we have our own influence on the iconic Japanese food. Sushi hand rolls first emerged in Australia in the late 1990s and spread through shopping centre-based chains in the 2000s. It's a style of sushi that in recent years has taken off elsewhere in the world, with "Australian-style" sushi stores first opening in the United States in 2023 and in the United Kingdom in 2024. But with these stores came the use of Kewpie mayo. "In the past 10 to 20 years, we tried to expand our brand abroad as well. I don't know the exact reason, but a lot of people, especially in Australia, know that the Kewpie brand," Kyoichi says. "There's a unique culture in Australia, there are a lot of sushi kiosks. 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And yet, there is no other condiment that has taken hold of the culinary world such as this one. You still see housemade barbecue sauce or homemade tomato relish on menus. And no burger joint is complete without a special sauce. But when it comes to mayonnaise, why do menus make a point of mentioning Kewpie mayo? Kewpie mayonnaise may seem like the newest thing in culinary, a Millennial food obsession that has influenced the hospitality industry. But you can't even say that Kewpie is the best thing since sliced bread - because the mayo predates it. The Japanese brand is celebrating its 100th year this year (sliced bread was first sold in 1928), and yes, there are celebrations happening in Japan to mark the occasion, including at the mayonnaise's one museum, Kewpie Mayo Terrace. But the inspiration behind Kewpie didn't come from Japan itself, but rather internationally. 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It's a style of sushi that in recent years has taken off elsewhere in the world, with "Australian-style" sushi stores first opening in the United States in 2023 and in the United Kingdom in 2024. But with these stores came the use of Kewpie mayo. "In the past 10 to 20 years, we tried to expand our brand abroad as well. I don't know the exact reason, but a lot of people, especially in Australia, know that the Kewpie brand," Kyoichi says. "There's a unique culture in Australia, there are a lot of sushi kiosks. I've never seen a country like that. So there are so many sushi bars or kiosks. Of course, other countries have a sushi restaurant, but not that many in a sushi kiosk. And obviously, people use Kewpie mayo a lot. I think this is a wonderful reason. The people know the Japanese style, mayonnaise." And once people knew about Kewpie mayonnaise, the uses were endless. Now, places such as Recess in Griffith will opt for the Japanese-style mayonnaise over anything else. When the cafe first opened last year, they started making their own Japanese-style mayonnaise, but due to time and space constraints, they've started stocking the original. "Compared to traditional mayonnaise, it's more like umami, so it's more flavorful," chef Vance Arellano says. "We still mix our own yuzu juice into it, because I like to control the citrus flavour, but it's the Kewpie mayonnaise that we're using. "But it's a pretty big trend. Almost every cafe, restaurant, or home mainly has Kewpie mayo. "Social media has really helped it a lot. Those trends of baked sushi and things that so people got on board with this different kind of mayonnaise." While the packaging could make you believe that Kewpie is just the same (or similar) recipe with different branding, there are actually key differences when it comes to the recipe. Kewpie is made with only egg yolks, while whole-egg mayonnaise is obviously made with whole eggs. Yolks add richness and density to recipes, whereas egg whites tend to add a fluffy, light texture. The yolks are also used as an emulsifier, bringing fat, water and acid together, which is key to making a mayo. Effectively, if the yolk wasn't added with the vegetable oil, water and vinegar, it wouldn't combine and thicken. But Kewpie is actually quite proud of their emulsion process, because while mayonnaise generally has oil particles 0.005mm in size, they refine it further down, so it is between 0.002mm and 0.004mm, increasing the mayo's creaminess. The final difference is the vinegar. The secret ingredient, if you will. While other brands and homemade recipes use Western vinegars such as white and malt vinegar, Kewpie had to navigate the selection of Japanese vinegars, which are primarily rice-based. For Nakashima, the milder rice vinegar wasn't ideal for the mayonnaise, but he used it for the first few decades because what the founder considered ideal was not available. But in 1962, Kewpie founded Nishifu Industries Co., Ltd. (now Kewpie Jyozo Co., Ltd.) with the aim of specifically making vinegar for mayonnaise. This distilled vinegar (as it reads on the label) is added alongside the rice vinegar. "We mix a lot of types of vinegars - apple vinegar, malt vinegar. But this is very secretive," Kyoichi says. "But vinegar is key to the taste of mayonnaise. It's very important." And while the bottle has not always been what it is today - it was originally released in a glass jar - it does play a role in the flavour we know today. There are no preservatives in Kewpie mayo, which means that any oxygen can impact the flavour and quality of the product. So when the squeezy bottle was introduced in 1958, it was for a couple of key reasons. Firstly, the soft plastic allowed for ease of use, but it was also made up of various layers of different plastic, including a lining, that can help protect the mayo from oxygen. And secondly, the design allowed any oxygen in the top of the bottle to be replaced by nitrogen.
