Transcription of The Stock Network Interview with Maronan Metals (ASX:MMA), Project Director Dean Fredericksen
Lel Smits: Maronan Metals is advancing the Maronan silver, lead and copper gold deposit near Cloncurry in northwest Queensland, one of Australia’s most productive mineral provinces. With a 65 million tonne global resource in hand, a 40,000 metre drilling program underway, and a $22 million investment from Canada’s Cantera Capital, the company is working towards a resource review and pre-feasibility study mid-next year with a potential mine life of more than 25 years. I’m joined today by Maronan Metals project director, Dean Fredericks, to discuss the drilling program and also the path to development.
Ahead of appearing at Sydney Mining Club, Dean, welcome to the Stock Network.
Dean Fredericksen: Thank you. It’s great to be here and great to tell you a bit about our story.
Lel Smits: Looking forward to it. And firstly, starting with the drilling and de-risking of the deposit, with 15,000 metres of a 400,000 metre program complete, can you outline really how drilling is de-risking the company?
Dean Fredericksen: So in September last year, we were able to publish a scoping study for the project. It was a modest scoping study on a small portion of the mineral resource.
This drill program, 40,000 metres, will enable us to infill areas that were not in that scoping study and therefore increase the size and shape of the study that we’ll put out as our pre-feasibility study in the near future. So really converting inferred to indicated mineral resources. Excellent.
And when it comes to the path to being Queensland’s next major underground mine, you’ve got $22 million from Conterra Capital in hand. In terms of next steps, what are the key milestones towards the 2027 pre-feasibility study, also development? So the Conterra investment was really important to us. It was a great vote of confidence in the type of project and the economics of the project, but also in the work that we’ve been doing prior to it.
So really enabling us to accelerate the program and build on the cash balance that we already had at the time. So our key milestones will be an updated mineral resource and pre-feasibility study in H2 FY27. And in addition, the listeners should look out that for some information, we’ve been engaging with the Queensland government to commence a mining license permitting process.
And we’re confident that this project will be declared a project of state significance in Queensland, and that’ll help us navigate our way through the permitting pathways.
Lel Smits: It certainly would. And look, I appreciate the update to the company today. Look forward to hearing more when you present at Sydney Mining Club coming up soon.
Dean Fredericksen: Thank you very much. Appreciate being here.
Ends