Transcription of The Stock Network Interview with Impact Minerals (ASX:IPT), Managing Director Dr. Mike Jones
Lel Smits: Impact Minerals has delivered further high-grade gold results and silver results from the Commonwealth Silica Hill project in New South Wales, and recent drilling confirmed broad mineralised continuity between Commonwealth and Commonwealth South, alongside a major breakthrough at Silica Hill with Bonanza grade gold and silver mineralisation. I’m joined by Managing Director Dr Mike Jones to discuss the significance of the latest drilling success and the next steps for expanding the project. Mike, welcome back to the Stock Network.
Dr. Mike Jones: Thanks Lel, always great to be here.
Lel Smits: Now, in partnership with Coneco, recent drilling at Commonwealth South returned strong gold and silver intersections. Can you outline how you’re working together and also what do these results really show you about the scale of the system?
Dr. Mike Jones: Yes Lel, so we’re in a joint venture with Coneco Ltd, ASX code KNI, and they are farming into our Commonwealth project which covers about 550 square kilometres in the Lachlan Fold Belt of New South Wales.
It’s one of Australia’s most prolific copper gold belts, very prospective, and many years ago we did define a resource there of gold and silver, fairly modest in size but had been certainly under-drilled. So Coneco are now farming in in a joint venture. It’s a six-year program, they’ve got one and a half, sorry three years to spend one and a half million dollars.
They look like they’re going to get there to that stage fairly quickly to earn 51 percent, and then another one and a half million dollars to earn 70 percent, and then impact is actually free carried for a 30 percent share to a decision to mine. So it’s a very good deal for impact and certainly exposes us to the considerable upside of this project. We’ve always believed in it and Coneco’s drill program, which comprises six diamond drill holes, certainly bolstered that story.
They’ve had excellent results in all six drill holes, the last two were out today, and they’ve shown that the mineralisation, gold, silver dominant, it has extended in all directions with some breakthrough drill results in places. So all in all it’s been a fantastic start to the program and Coneco have done an excellent job in the six months they’ve been in the joint venture, spending money not only on drilling but also on more grassroots exploration across the portfolio. So we’re looking forward to some more exciting results going forward.
Lel Smits: Yes and Mike you’ve also had some very high grade results at Silica Hill delivering bonanza grade mineralisation. What are the standouts for you personally and also and more broadly how significant is this discovery?
Dr. Mike Jones: So the Commonwealth project was always known as a historic small gold silver lead zinc mine there, it’s a volcanogenic massive sulphide. It’s actually very unusual in Australia.
Our work showed that it’s the only deposit in Australia similar to the very significant Eskay Creek project in British Columbia. It’s a very well-known, world-famous mine that contains well over 10 million ounces of gold and 300 or 400 million ounces of silver and we have the same mineralogy and the same geology and that’s one of the reasons that we’ve always believed in it. So we’ve only defined a couple of massive sulphide lenses but as part of our work we then discovered the Silica Hill epithermal deposit.
It has a similar mineralogy, just different textures and we’ve previously had some very interesting and high grade results there but Caneco made a significant step out drill hit of 0.5 metres, half a metre which might not seem very much but it was actually super high grade, 27 grams per tonne and two percent silver. One of the highest individual drill results I’m sure in Australia this year so it’s a fantastic outcome and that intercept is actually below a fault which looks like it’s offset the deposit that we found and so underneath it now we’ve now opened up a huge area for follow-up drilling and we’re fairly confident we’re going to get more of these super high grade veins as Caneco does its follow-up drill program. So the other drill results have also been a very high grade similar to what we found before and indicate that the resource that we’ve defined should be able to grow once they do a recalculation after the next drill program.
Lel Smits: Great and Mike with mineralisation expanding across Commonwealth, Commonwealth South and Silica Hill, what are the key milestones that investors really should be watching out for in the coming months?
Dr. Mike Jones: So mineralisation is now really stacking up over a strike length of probably at least six, seven hundred metres. It’s open in either direction and at depth in particular obviously the breakthrough at Silica Hill and we’ve also believed that there’s a significant target for porphyry copper mineralisation underlying the known deposit that we’ve already discussed. As we drill deeper into it we’re seeing increasing copper and some narrow grades of quite high copper up to a few percent so we’re very excited as the drilling gets deeper.
So Caneco have announced that they have got access to a rig that rig is due to arrive in early July which is only sort of six weeks away I think from where we are now and they’ve got a major program. Not sure how big that will be yet but certainly bigger than the couple of thousand metres they’ve just completed so we are very excited about what that follow-up drill program is going to deliver in particular below Silica Hill. So lots of news to come on Commonwealth as we go forward.
Lel Smits: Mike, I appreciate the update from Impact Minerals and look forward to hearing more about all of that news coming ahead.
Dr. Mike Jones: That’s great thanks very much Lel.
Ends