Transcription of The Stock Network Interview with Estrella Resources (ASX:ESR), Managing Director Chris Daws
Lel Smits: Estrella Resources is a mineral exploration and development company focused on emerging manganese assets in Timor-Leste and advanced nickel projects in Western Australia. Estrata holds a first-mover position in Timor-Leste where drilling at the Werumata limestone project has now commenced following full environmental approvals. Ahead of presenting at the Ignite Investment Summit in Hong Kong, I’m joined by Managing Director Chris Daws to discuss Estrela’s accelerating exploration program and strategy to unlocking new mineral provinces.
Chris, welcome to the Stock Network.
Chris Daws: Hi Lel, great to be here, great to be on the Stock Network and happy to be talking to people listening in.
Lel Smits: Well we’re happy to have you here and with approvals in place and drilling now underway at Werumata, how is Estrella positioned to capitalise on its first-mover advantage and also define large-scale resources across Timor-Leste’s underexplored mineral system?
Chris Daws: Yeah thanks Lel for the question. I guess we’ve been very fortunate that we are a first-mover in Timor and we’ve been there for a couple of years now but only operational for the past 12 months. The approvals that we have received for Werumata allows us to go in and drill out high-grade calcite resource. We’re targeting in excess of 500 million tonnes of high-grade calcite or limestone situated on the coast, the northern coast of Timor-Leste.
It’s about 30 kilometres to the east of Bacau which is a regional centre of Timor-Leste, probably the second largest city. It’s very accessible, that’s the main thing. The logistics for Werumata for us is what stands out as well as the high-grade nature of the calcite.
The approvals process that we’ve gone through has been in stages. So initially we’ve received licensing for the Werumata area for exploration and evaluation under terms of Category C which allows us to move across the land and then the Category B licensing that we’ve just received allows us to then move in and do more investigative work and I guess a little bit more clearing and allowing us to put tracks in and put drill pads in and obviously drill. So that’s what we’re doing now.
We’re in the process of moving equipment, putting access tracks in, preparing drill pads. In fact we’re a long way advanced to that now and the RC rig is due to turn up imminently and probably by the time this goes to air we’ll probably already be drilling.
Lel Smits: Brilliant. Now Timor-Leste is a fascinating country and more on the operating environment. How is Australia approaching factors such as sovereign risk infrastructure, also the developing mine code as it advances exploration and project development in the country?
Chris Daws: Yeah look that’s a very good question, another very good question Lele. We obviously as a first mover into Timor, we are the first.
The mining code in Timor is very, very new. Timor as a nation is very, very new. The mining code was passed in 2023 so we’re I guess the guinea pigs in some respects in testing how robust that mining law is and so we’re feeling our way through as much as the government and statutory bodies are in implementing that mining code.
It is robust. The legislative framework that they have set is along similar lines to the West Australian mining law and so we’re fairly familiar with those sort of regimes so we will work within that legislative framework, we’ll work certainly within the norms of what we do as a mining exploration company and development company and that we’ll certainly look after the best way we can in terms of the way we operate. Our environmental and social governance policies are strong.
We implement those, we highly regard those and we certainly press fairly hard in our Timorese training. We press pretty hard on that environmental social governance aspects and the Timorese government are very strong on the community involvement as well and the engagement so there’s a fair bit of that that we are doing as well. We’re employing some fairly substantial amounts of staff in Timor.
We’ve built the staff from nothing to we’ve got 12 geological staff now and geophysicists running through across a fairly large land tenure. We’re the largest land holder in Timor but obviously at some stage we’ll move from exploration evaluation licenses under the mining code to a category A which is a mining license and to do that we need to obviously put in some mine feasibility work etc and then there’s a whole range of other things that have to happen. I won’t go into an enormous amount of detail here.
We have stated that to the ASX and I do urge people to go back to the ASX and review some of the work and statements that we have made in relation to our joint venture partner MIRAC-Y which is a government partner they’ll come in at 30 percent based upon whether they want to participate at the mine decision stage and we’d be very happy to have them on board. They’ve been very good partners. We’ve been working very well with the government.
The government is extremely supportive. We want to see a mining industry in Timor. We’re very happy to be the leaders from the international community be in Timor to be leading the charge in building exploration and development opportunities in Timor and the opportunity obviously at Wirrimata is enormous.
A 500 million ton calcite resource that we’re looking at is so that we can look to export many many millions of tons of limestone into the Southeast Asian market. That’s extremely exciting for us. It’s very exciting for the Timorese and obviously for our shareholders it would be extremely exciting as well but it’s not just Wirrimata and the limestone.
Obviously we’re drilling and we’ve had drilling approvals in place since May of this year of the Irimiri Manganese project which is a little bit further to the east. It’s only seven kilometres from the coast and 15 kilometres from the port of Qom so infrastructure is very key for some of these projects in what you would class as an emerging nation but having road, bitumised highways, access to a port, access to power, people, personnel, access in and out of the country, daily flights, it all makes it reasonably easy for us to operate in Timor. It’s in a similar time zone.
I’ve worked all over the world. Being on the other side of the globe at a 12-hour difference can be very problematic and I’m sure you’ve had interviews with parties that have been on the other side of the globe and trying to interview people at 1am in the morning is probably not the greatest and talking to staff at 1am in the morning it becomes problematic as well but we’re very happy to be operating there. Irimiri is fantastic.
The drill hole intersections, our very first drill hole at Irimiri was six and a half metres at 51%, the second hole was over eight metres at 53% manganese and we’ve subsequently released a number of drill holes that have even bigger widths, anywhere between 5 and 13 metres. We’re regularly hitting manganese at Irimiri. The assays are in the laboratory and they’re fairly imminent.
We’ve had a number of batches dispatched to Jakarta. That’s where the samples go for assay at an accredited lab in Jakarta. So we’ve set up ways to do and operate in Timor.
Just even the simple things like taking a sample across the border into Kupang and then on ships to Jakarta, there’s all these logistical nightmares that we go through that people don’t see that obviously we work through and now that we’ve got the pathway and we’re creating the pathway for others to come and join us in Timor and I openly say Timor is a fantastic place to operate. The government is extremely supportive. I’d appreciate having a few more people up there to have a beer with from time to time and exchange stories but it’s fabulous being up there.
We’re like kids in a lolly shop. Not a day goes by that our exploration crews aren’t out in the field looking for additional minerals and it’s an exciting part of the world to be exploring. I mean it sits between some of the highest, biggest grade copper gold mines in the world in PNG in Indonesia and I don’t think Timor will be any different.
One day we’ll make a fairly significant discovery on that front as well. So exciting times for us and our shareholders and yeah I really implore people to go back and have a look at what we’re doing because it’s pretty exciting.
Lel Smits: Well thank you so much for running us through the outline, through those highlights for Estrella and look forward to seeing you at the Ignite Investment Conference in Hong Kong.
Chris Daws: Very much looking forward to that Lel and I’ll just say one thing, stay tuned, stay engaged, go Estrella!
Ends