Transcription of The Stock Network Interview with Moab Minerals (ASX:MOM), Managing Director, Malcolm Day & Geologist Byron Dumpleton
Lel Smits: Moab Minerals is an Australian exploration company with a diversified portfolio of uranium, gold and copper assets. Moab Minerals has just announced the acquisition of Inbus Mining, which holds the right to earn up to 80% of the Sassari Gold and Copper Project in Zambia. The project hosts both the historic Sassari Gold Mine and a 10-kilometre copper anomaly corridor to the north.
Joining me today is Moab’s Managing Director, Malcolm Day, and also geologist Byron Dumpleton, who has been appointed as a consultant to Moab to assist with upcoming exploration. We’ll be discussing Moab Minerals’ strategic expansion into Zambia and the opportunities ahead. Malcolm, welcome to the Struck Network.
Malcolm Day: Hi, Lel, great to be here. And Byron, welcome to TSN. Yeah, hi, Lil, and thanks to be here as well.
Lel Smits: Now, Malcolm, Moab has announced the acquisition of Inbus Mining, giving the company access to Zambia’s Sassari Gold and Copper Project. How does this transaction position Moab to diversify and accelerate its growth in the gold and copper space?
Malcolm Day: Okay, so Moab acquired the Manure and Uranium Project in Tanzania on 9 July last year, and last month we announced our main resource and project of 27 million pounds of contained uranium. But given the current depressed price of uranium, it’s forced Moab to look for other projects.
So we’ve looked at gold projects in Africa, because we’ve got a lot of experience in Tanzania, and of the dozens of projects we’ve assessed, the Sassari Gold and Copper Project was an absolute standout. And it’s a standout for a number of reasons, but it enables Moab to continue advancing the Manure and Uranium Project in the background, but it also provides Moab with exposure to copper and gold. And of course, gold is at an all-time high, and copper’s not far from it.
So that’s a great point between these two commodities. Moab’s lucky insofar as the project is controlled by two very experienced geologists, experienced in gold and also in Africa, with Bill Guy and also Byron Dumbleton. So Bill’s chairman, and Byron’s a non-executive director of ASX-listed Thieb Gold, and they’ve got 6 million ounces of gold in South Africa, which is just about to bring into production.
So it just demonstrates a level of African gold experience. So Byron’s also credited with turning around gold production at the Kingly Hills Gold Mine in Western Australia. He’s recently joined Moab as a consultant, with a view to taking on a non-executive director role in the future.
So with Moab’s experience in Tanzania, and Byron’s vast gold experience and input from Bill Guy, we think we can accelerate exploration of the Sassari Gold Project. And look, with the copper prospector as well, we’ve got a great opportunity for both commodities.
Lel Smits: Excellent and with the Sassari Gold Mine historically producing 12,500 ounces before operations ceased in 1942, what early exploration work is planned to assess the scale and also the continuity of mineralisation across the project area?
Malcolm Day: Okay, so let’s go back a few steps. The licence is 51 square kilometres, so it’s a large licence. In the north section of the licence, there’s a 10 kilometre copper strike, which has been identified by historic explorers. There’s some stellar drill intercepts, including at 52 metres from surface, creating 2.72% copper. In the southeast of the licence is the historic Sassari Gold Mine that produced over 12,500 ounces of gold. Now over the last few months, Byron has spent considerable time analysing a huge amount of historical exploration data, and this has enabled Byron to develop 3 copper prospects in the northern part of the licence.
He’s also identified a 1.6 kilometre gold corridor around the Sassari Gold Mine. Now our main focus is going to be the gold corridor for a few reasons, one because of the price of gold, and two because we think this is the most prospective of the prospects. There’s also lots of artisanal miners all over the copper area, the 3 prospects, and also around the historic Sassari Gold Mine.
This just demonstrates that they’re still active, which means they’re still mining. Again, it demonstrates mineralogy. We’ve had a local team in the ground for the last week, and they’ve done a reconnaissance survey, and they’ve been taking rock chip samples throughout the copper prospects, and also around the Sassari Gold Mine.
They’ve had a drone out on the project, and that’s provided us with some great imagery. That’ll be very helpful for exploration planning. Now that we’ve got the results of this reconnaissance survey, that’ll help us with dual program planning around the historic gold mine and also the copper prospects as well.
So Byron’s developed exploration targets for both the copper prospects and the gold project, and our exploration manager, along with Byron, they’ve already started planning for the drone. So we’ve got a shareholder meeting late next month. Once the shareholder meeting’s finished, then we can hit the ground running.
By then we’ll know exactly where we should be drilling. So it’s an exciting time to head for more shareholders.
Lel Smits: Great to hear. Thank you, Malcolm. And looking closer now at geological prospectivity and the exploration model, Byron, you’re a geologist and also shareholder of Invers. Can you expand on the iron oxide copper gold style exploration model that is being applied to Sassari? And also, what are the key geological indicators suggesting this system could host significant gold and copper resources?
Byron Dumpleton: Yeah, yeah. Thanks, Lel. Yeah. Well, firstly, what I’ll do, I’ll go through the key points that sort of drive this, what we think is an IOCG.
Just remember, IOCG is a, that has its, let’s say, falls into a big bucket of geology terms and so on. But importantly, what I see, it ticks a lot of boxes for the key components of a potential IOCG. Firstly is the mineralisation.
I mean, for an IOCG, the principal characteristics is the abundance of iron oxide minerals. Based on mapping that’s been conducted previously and plus on the team I’ve got there at the moment, they are seeing widespread iron alteration. Also, historic airborne magnetics also suggest there’s a significant iron alteration that occurs over tens of kilometres.
This was all conducted back in the mid to early 2000s by African Eagle Resources. And also importantly, what we see also on our tenement, as Malcolm alluded to, is that we see a lot of copper anomalism and we can trace this on our tenement for over 10 kilometres. So we’re also, of which the geos currently on, who are out in the field, well, they were field last week, they’re seeing a lot of oxide dusting across the rocks and also in all the lithologies that they were looking at across the northern sections of the tenement.
And also, more importantly, as you would have seen in our announcement last Thursday, the 46 holes that were drilled by African Eagle Resources for about 6,400 metres, it demonstrated the potential for economic mineralisation and, you know, including a fantastic hole of 52 metres at 2.7. I have to disclose there that hole did drill along the strike, or should I say down the structure and along the strike. But more importantly, the other holes that were drilled perpendicular to the strike of the copper mineralisation there, we were getting hits of 65 metres at 0.7% copper, that which included 7 metres at 2.4%, 9 metres, another hole 9 metres at 2.5, another hole 8 metres at 1.7. That in itself shows some nice strong copper potential in through there. The next important thing for IOCGs is what we call alteration.
What we want to see in IOCGs is abundant calc-silicate alteration in conjunction with the iron oxides, which sort of just mentioned before that were identified on the tenement. What is striking that is on the tenement that, again, identified by African Eagle Resources and the geologists they had there, is widespread hydrothermal alteration, especially in the form of what we call sodic calc-silicate alteration. This occurs on a kilometre scale, so this helps ticking another box for being an IOCG.
The other thing that’s important for IOCG deposits is what we call morphology. We like to see a variety of morphology, so we want to see veining, breccia pipes, sheeted veins, stockwork, if possible, diatremes. But on the tenement to date, it’s been mapped.
The geologists in the previous companies have identified breccia pipes from trench mapping in the trenching over especially Mawazi. They identified the copper mineralisation was occurring in steep dipping shears. In addition to this, this is what we identified over at the historic Sassari gold mine, sheeted hydrothermal veining, of which I’m treating Sassari as a distal feature of an IOCG system for mineralisation.
On top of all this is also what’s important for IOCGs is association with igneous activity. Generally, we want to see igneous activity, especially related to late-stage granites of, in geo-speak, I and A-type granites. It just happens that on our tenements to the north of us, we have a granite which has been identified as an A-type association.
What we also notice on this granite intrusion is the copper mineralisation generally occurs on the southern boundaries of this. At the Mawazi and Eagle Eye prospects, the mineralisation is approximately 300 to 500 metres away from that granite contact. What we’re also seeing is that Mawazi and Eagle Eye is hosted in what we call amphibolites, which were generated from original and acidic volcanoclastic composition.
Another key thing and a very important thing for it is what we call tectonic and structural settings. For IOCG deposits, you generally want to have a lot of localised faults, which are generally splays. Also, you want to be close to large, major crustal scale structures.
Where we’re positioned, what happens to be located to the south of our tenement is the Wembeshi Shear Zone. The Wembeshi Shear Zone is a significant deep-seated structure which runs over 1,000 kilometres, which cuts through Zambia. With this, we believe we’re observing second- and third-order structures, which peel off the Wembeshi Shear Zone, especially what is controlling the historic Cesare Gold Mine.
Another key feature for all this is with these deep-seated faults, these are the conduits or the plumbing, if you like, that bring in these melts, these hot fluids and mineralisation fluids. So again, that ticks another box. So in summary, just from that, what I’ve seen over pouring through the data and what the teams that are observed on site, we believe potentially ticks all the boxes for an IOCG exploration model.
Lel Smits: Wonderful. And Byron, you previously served as Chief Geologist at Red 5 before the merger with Silver Lake Resources, along with senior roles with Straits Resources, Newcrest, WMC and your junior years with KCGM. How are you applying that major gold and copper systems experience to shape Moab minerals exploration?
Byron Dumpleton: Ah, yes, yeah. Thanks for that. From all those years, so originally from working with these companies when I first started back in late 87 on the Golden Mile as a underground sampler, where I sort of eventually became part of the geology team that compiled the geological interpretations for the original super pit. From here over these sort of years, I’ve sort of always specialised being my geologist and often becoming a resource geologist.
I’ve always sort of worked in sort of complex gold environments with these companies I’ve worked with, through to copper, especially with my time with Straits. Probably a key thing, especially my time with back with WMC, I was very lucky to be surrounded by a lot of smart and very talented geologists, where I definitely learned a lot, especially working in gold back in my days in Campbellda. Then moving after that with my time with Straits, sort of when I first moved, joined them, they had the nifty copper mine up in the Great Sandy Desert.
From there, I learned a lot about mining, understanding the geology for heap leach, copper, SXCW operations. And then obviously over time, when they got Triton copper operations running in central New South Wales, I was involved with Straits then to, you know, with mining the primary copper to produce a copper concentrate to sell to the market. So with those experiences, I got a lot of copper exposure and understanding, which has been great for me.
While my time back with Straits, I was also working at Mount Murrah in central Kalimantan in Indonesia, which is identified as a low-solidation, mineralised, epithermal environment. I was also involved with geological modelling and resource modelling of hill groves, antennae and the gold project in New South Wales as well, when Straits used to have it. And obviously my last 10 years working with REDD5, where I became the REDD5 chief geologist, there I initially started working with them at the Sienna Gold Mine in North East Mindanao in the Philippines, which is what we classify as a high-solidation epithermal deposit.
And before we moved back to Australia, we picked up the two projects, King of the Hills off Saracen and Darlow Gold Operation from Goldfields back in October 2017. From here, we transformed the Darlow Gold Operation from a 400,000 tonne to a 600,000 tonne operation up to a million tonne operation before we got to understand the potential of King of the Hills, which I had a lot of input on the geology of turning that around to be able to build a 4.7 million tonne per annum gold operation, of which I’m very proud I’ve been involved in, especially identifying the geology for what King of the Hills is today as a successful operation. So in summary, from working with all these companies, I’ve always been heavily involved with exploration activities, drilling, resource development and resource modelling.
So on the back of these experiences, I’ve developed a strong and operational expertise, which I hope to apply to the Sassari Gold and Copper Project and hope to shape Moab minerals.
Lel Smits: Well, thank you so much, Malcolm and Byron for the update to the very exciting Sassari project and Moab minerals. I look forward to following development.
Malcolm Day: Thank you, Lel.
Byron Dumpleton: Thank you, Lel.
Ends