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The Right Postcode: Sipa shines a spotlight on South Australia's gold potential
WA may be Australia's home of gold, but South Australia has been flying under the radar
Among SA's exciting explorers is Sipa Resources, which recently acquired the Nuckulla Hill and Tunkillia North assets bordering Barton Gold
We chat to Sipa's managing director Andrew Muir about the opportunity
Mergers and acquisitions in the metals and mining sector heavily favoured gold over base metals in 2024, and that trend has continued into 2025.
The initial wave of M&A activity was driven by larger players.
But junior resources companies are now stepping up, targeting project acquisitions to grow their portfolios and expand operational footprints in response to favourable market conditions and high gold prices.
Recent examples include TG Metals (ASX:TG6) acquiring the Van Uden gold project in Western Australia, Minerals 260 (ASX:MI6) purchasing the Bullabulling Gold Project from Norton Goldfields, Auric Mining (ASX:AWJ) securing the Lindsay's Project in WA and Great Divide Mining (ASX:GDM) taking a 15% stake in Adelong Gold's Challenger mine as part of a restart strategy.
Western Australia has attracted the lion's share of the attention as the source of 70% of Australia's world class gold production.
But South Australia offers compelling exploration and development prospects that have largely gone unnoticed.
Mineral-rich neighbourhood
SIPA Resources (ASX:SRI) illustrates this point well, with its Nuckulla Hill gold asset adjacent to Barton Gold (ASX:BGD) 1.6Moz Tunkillia gold deposit in South Australia's Gawler Craton.
The company marked its entry into the highly prospective post code last year when it secured a binding agreement to acquire full ownership of three projects from Gawler Craton Pty Ltd.
It also owns two other gold projects in the vicinity, Skye and Tunkillia North, the latter of which borders Barton Gold's asset.
Other major gold deposits in the region include Barton Gold's 1.2Moz Challenger mine, originally discovered by Dominion Mining in 1995.
Nearby budding gold explorers include Indiana Resources (ASX:IDA) and their Minos deposit, which surrounds Sipa's Tunkillia North asset.
Drilling and scoping study related activities are in the works at Minos, with Indiana looking to deliver a maiden resource at the asset sometime this year.
At the start of the year, the project yielded bonanza-grade results of up to 44.9g/t and 45.9g/t gold, highlighting its strong potential for a viable mining operation.
The current 27-hole for 6600m RC program is scheduled to continue until August 2025, targeting extensions to Minos in all directions.
The Tunkillia North and Nuckulla Hill projects host multiple advanced and large-scale gold prospects, while Skye sits along strike from Barton Gold's Gold Bore resource, and less than 50km from high-grade intersections generated by Marmota (ASX:MEU) at Aurora Tank.
While exploration is still in its early phases, evidence has emerged that the Yarlbrinda Shear Zone extends from Barton's Tunkillia deposit into Sipa's Nuckulla Hill landholding.
Speaking with Stockhead, Sipa managing director Andrew Muir said the company is optimistic there is potential for a significant discovery on its ground.
'It's a very big, and pretty wide, shear zone which has had a lot of gold-rich fluids travel along it,' he said.
Similar rocks and geology
As Muir points out, Sipa holds ground covering ~40km of the same shear zone as Barton's Tunkillia with similar rock types. But compared to Barton's tenure it's remarkably underexplored.
'We have some early-stage drill hits, particularly at prospects like Bimba and Sheoak, that aren't too dissimilar to Barton's Tunkillia,' he added.
'We're excited to undertake our first drill program soon and hopefully find something of substance.'
The Yarlbrinda Shear Zone is a major structure about 150km long and 12km wide and is analogous to the major Kalgoorlie Shear Zone in WA.
Pending heritage and PEPR approvals, RC and aircore drill programs will begin at Nuckulla HIll over the coming weeks to follow up historically identified gold anomalism and mineralisation, as well as to test new areas to the north and south of Barton's Tunkillia gold deposit.
Elsewhere in the district, Barton has recently launched a 2500m drilling program at its Tarcoola project, about 70km northwest of Tunkillia and within trucking distance of its processing plant, with a major focus on the new Tolmer 'silver zone' discovery.
Recent assay results from the first seven discovery holes have placed among several 'global Top 10' rankings, highlighting a promising new commercial pathway for Barton Gold.
Its actively working towards constructing a new processing plant, with their plan involving recommissioning the existing Central Gawler Mill to bring it into production by mid-2026 and then developing a second mill at the Tunkillia project.
Unlocking synergies and scale
Barton is at a more advanced stage than Sipa, having steadily increased the size of Tunkillia since its original discovery in the 90s.
But if a meaningful discovery is made on Sipa's ground in the future, Muir said consolidation could offer several strategic benefits.
'Given Barton have a very large deposit just up the road and are already on the path of funding and building a processing plant, if we found something of reasonable size it would make sense to use the one central plant rather than build two processing plants,' he said.
'There's many synergies associated with that from an M&A perspective. If we find something big enough, we'd be keen to develop it ourselves, but it all depends on the drilling.'
