Transcription of The Stock Network Interview with Impact Minerals (ASX:IPT), Dr Mike Jones, Managing Director
Lel Smits: Impact Minerals has commenced a diamond drilling program at its Commonwealth Gold Silver project in New South Wales, led by joint venture partner Kuniko. The drilling targets extensions of high grade mineralisation, supported by recent geophysics and geochemistry, highlighting significant growth potential within the Lachlan Fold Belt. Ahead of appearing at Stocks on Location, I’m joined by Dr Mike Jones, Managing Director of Impact Minerals, to discuss how this program advances exploration and unlocks the full potential of the Commonwealth project.
Mike, welcome back to the Stock Network.
Dr Mike Jones: Thanks Lel, always great to be here.
Lel Smits: Now, how does the commencement of the 1,200 metre diamond drilling program support your objectives for really expanding, extending the high grade mineralisation at Commonwealth?
Dr Mike Jones: So, thanks Lel. The Commonwealth project’s in the Lachlan Fold Belt of New South Wales. It’s one of Australia’s most prolific golden copper belts, famous for the giant mine, the Kady Ridgeway, and a lot of exploration going on through that region. So, the Commonwealth is a volcanogenic massive sulphide.
We’ve identified some very high grade resources, only modest in size, but open at depth. And so we now have a joint venture with Kuniko. They are active at the moment with the drill program.
They have the opportunity to earn a 70% interest over the next four years. And we’re looking to do, in the first instance, test some resource extensions, as you mentioned, but also drilling some of the deeper and very interesting targets that Impact never got to when we were active on the project. So, we’re very excited and a little bit confident perhaps that we should intersect some decent looking mineralisation over the next few weeks and look forward to results as Kuniko release them.
Lel Smits: Excellent. And what does the newly identified four kilometre conductive corridor and multiple geophysical targets mean for the potential scale and depth of the Commonwealth mineralised system?
Dr Mike Jones: So, Kuniko were very progressive in their exploration, and so they completed what’s called a mobile MT survey over the area. And MT is magnetotellurics, and it basically uses the Earth’s magnetic and electrical fields to identify conductors within the Earth’s crust.
And it can see to some depth, three, four, five kilometres, depending on what you’re doing, or even deeper. In this case then, so the data from Kuniko survey identified quite a significant large conductor underlying almost the entire Commonwealth trend with sort of what looked like chutes coming up into some of the mineralised areas, which indicate to us that some of these structures are very deep seeded. And that’s one of the hallmarks that you want to look for, for very large deposits.
And so we believe as we drill deeper, we’re going to intersect further mineralisation going down into these magic chutes.
Lel Smits: Excellent. And Mike, finally, with 88,800 ounces of gold and 3.3 million ounces of silver already defined and increasing copper grades detected really, how could this program now really contribute to the overall project upside?
Dr Mike Jones: So the Commonwealth, the VMS deposit is the only deposit that we know of in Australia that’s very similar to the world class Eskay Creek project in British Columbia.
That thing is a mother of all bodies, probably 10 million ounces of gold running one ounce per tonne, and probably three or 400 million ounces of silver. And that’s being brought back into production by a company called Skeena Resources. We have very similar mineralogy, very similar geology and chemistry.
And we believe that as we drill deeper, there’s a very good chance we can find more massive sulphide lenses and hopefully turn it into something that’s, you know, even half the size of Eskay Creek would be very grateful for. So that’s where it all fits into the big picture.
Lel Smits: Well, Mike, I appreciate you taking me through it today. Also look forward to hearing more face to face at Stocks On location in March in Sydney.
Dr Mike Jones: Thanks. It looks like a great event and I look very much forward to presenting there.
Ends