Transcription of The Stock Network Interview with Lunnon Metals (ASX:LM8), Managing Director Edmund Ainscough
Lel Smits: Lunnon Metals is advancing a pivotal phase of growth at its gold-focused operations within Western Australia’s St Ives Gold Camp. During the December 2025 quarter, the company progressed drilling, permitting and de-risking activities across its portfolio, culminating post-quarter in regulatory approval, a final investment decision and commencement of site works at the Lady Herial Gold Project. Ahead of appearing at Stocks on Location, I’m joined by Managing Director Edmund Ainscough to discuss how these milestones position the company as the next new gold producer on the Foster Belt.
Welcome Edmund to the Stock Network.
Edmund Ainscough: Thanks, Lel, fantastic to be here.
Lel Smits: Now with mining at Lady Herial underway following final regulatory approval, an unconditional all-purchase agreement and positive feasibility study, how is Lunnon Metals preparing to execute its first open pit in the St Ives region in over a decade? And also, can you outline just how significant this is in terms of transforming the company into a cash generating gold producer?
Edmund Ainscough: Yeah, look, it’s been an extremely busy seven or eight months.
I think it was July last year where we really started to communicate in our announcements on the ASX and to shareholders that we saw an opportunity at Lady Herial. Somewhat uniquely, it’s quite small and modest and we’ve been very clear about the size of Lady Herial, but it does stick out of the ground. It is quite thick and the strip ratio is certainly very amenable to open pit mining.
So we recognised that early and again, somewhat uniquely, we decided to, working with our major shareholder Goldfields, who own the Lafroix plant right next door to our property up at St Ives, we decided to de-risk the project, not only to get it permitted, but to actually grade control it right up front. So typically you wouldn’t get into the grade control phase of an operation until you were mining, but we had the chance because it’s shallow and it was sticking out of the ground to completely drill it from surface before we even started. And because of that, we were able to present the case to Goldfields to sign off on that model.
It expedited the commercial relationship. You mentioned the all-purchase agreement that is now unconditional. In parallel, we ran the Feasibility Study, plugging all the numbers in from the contractors and from Goldfields in terms of the processing.
We agreed the recovery and to your question about in terms of preparing, at the preparing stage is over, we are actually now mining. So no more preparation, no time for celebration, time to just take a deep breath, to be really grateful for all the hard work that everyone’s done. Myself, my contractors, my consultants and Goldfields, and actually now to look forward and to execute safely, execute efficiently, delivering in what is an amazing opportunity in terms of this gold price to be on granted mining tenements with a partner like Goldfields to be able to turn that to account is a pretty special opportunity for us and our shareholders.
Lel Smits: Absolutely. And great to hear you’re ready to go. When it comes to the longer term picture, Lunnon Metals has returned multiple high grade results at Lady Herial and promising intersections across the wider Foster Baker area.
But how are these results really strengthening the confidence in the broader belt scale opportunity? And what role do you think ongoing drilling and exploration will play as these mining operations really ramp up?
Edmund Ainscough: Well, myself and my exploration manager, Aaron Well, for our sins, have been working in the Camboutus and Ives area for a very long time. In my case, I first arrived there in 1987. I came back in 1994.
My exploration, Aaron, started in 1996. And we’d principally be working on and off the WMC and then Goldfields and then in our own private interest prior to lifting Lunnon Metals in this very region for a very long time. And it’s always been a bit of an enigma that there wasn’t more Gold in this belt.
So, we got this opportunity from Goldfields because of our relationship with Goldfields back in 2014, but it was very much focused on Nickel. The Foster mine, the Jan mine, we made a Nickel discovery once we lifted Gold Baker, very much a Nickel belt. And for that reason, in WMC days and in Goldfields days, it never really got a focus for Gold.
So, the exciting thing is we have this hole in what’s essentially a golden doughnut. St Ives has produced 16Moz. There are 7Moz right on our doorstep of prior production to our immediate north and our immediate south.
And geologically, it would be more strange. It would be harder to explain why there’s no more Gold there than it would to actually be to go and find it. So, we’re very excited.
Lady Herial WMC is kind of proof of the pudding. We’ve got some great results coming that look like Lady Herial will grow. And as you said, in parallel away from Lady Herial, we’re starting to get some really exciting results.
So, really, we’d like to show that our project tenements up at St Ives are a valid part of the whole belt that produced 16Moz. So, it could be anything there, there might be nothing there, but we’re pretty excited. And each new drill hole is an opportunity to prove the doubters wrong.
We think there’s something significant there and we’re kind of dead set to go and find it.
Lel Smits: Well, Edmund, it is so great to hear your excitement and I look forward to hearing more in person at Stocks on Location.
Edmund Ainscough: Perfect. Look forward to it too.
Ends