Transcription of The Stock Network Interview with Neometals (ASX:NMT), Managing Director and CEO Christopher Reed
Lel Smits: Neometals has reported encouraging early results from its first-pass reverse circulation drilling program at the historic Rinaldi Copper Prospect within the Barrambie Project in Western Australia. I’m joined today by Managing Director and CEO Christopher Reed to discuss the significance of the early copper hits and also what comes next as exploration accelerates. Chris, welcome back to the Stock Network.
Christopher Reed: Thank you very much, Lel. Pleasure to be here.
Lel Smits: Now, I’m interested to hear more about your latest news. The RC Drilling has confirmed primary copper sulphide mineralisation beneath the historic Rinaldi pit. What does this mean really for your understanding of the system and also how significant do you think this is in terms of a shift from historical shallow mineralisation?
Christopher Reed: Yeah, look, I think it’s a big shift. Historically, Rinaldi was a small, very high-grade Copper Oxide open pit last mine in 1961, produced at about 9% Copper.
Just off our northern boundary, we’ve got Solstice Minerals. They’ve got a very large disseminated Copper Gold ore body. We decided to go down and do some drilling underneath the old pit with the aim of making sure that it just wasn’t a shallow oxide or super-dune sort of enrichment.
The RC Drilling now has confirmed that there is a primary sulphide Copper system at depth, which is fantastic. That has really changed our understanding. It’s early days and we’ve still got to do more work in terms of demonstrating the continuity and the scale and the economics.
But having high-grade Copper in there, the Gold and the Silver assays are still pending, so we’re pretty keen to get them back. We just assayed a subset of 50 samples, so we’ve got another 450 to go. We think there’s a sulphide halo around the quartz reef.
We’re pretty happy. Initial assays from a subset of samples have delivered strong Copper grades. What stands out for you in these early results and also how confident are you in the broader scale potential as more assays come through? I’ll answer the second part first.
I will wait until the other assays come through before I start making any sort of confidence in terms of how big the system can be. Certainly the presence of Gold and Silver with the Copper sulphides adds to the story. Yes, there are some high-grade Copper intercepts there.
I think the most important thing about this drilling program has been the identification by near-metals of Boronite and Chalcopyrite, which confirms what the old-timers mined in the shafts. That’s very reassuring. Having Boronite as opposed to Chalcopyrite, Boronite is better because the sulphide is about 60% and the Chalcopyrite is about 30% in terms of Copper grade.
Having both of them there is even better. We’re very happy.
Lel Smits: Fantastic. In terms of next steps with further drilling assays pending, how do you expect this next phase of work is going to help to define the scale and geometry of mineralisation and guide follow-up drilling?
Christopher Reed: I think the other 450 assays that outstanding and indeed the Gold and Silver assays for the current 50 that we’ve released will give us an idea of the presence of a sulphide halo around the quartz, which would be good. In terms of the next steps, we’re not going to patent drill it. We’re going to try to be a little bit smarter.
Some of our neighbours have had good success with dipole-to-dipole induced polarisation, so essentially firing electricity down, trying to get a chargeability anomaly. With the grade of Copper in the sulphides that we’ve got, we’re pretty confident that if there’s anything down there, it’ll light up. Initially, we’ll do a 2km north-south by a kilometre east-west IP survey centred around the open pit and see if we can’t light something up and then get the drill back into it.
Lel Smits: Fantastic. Chris, I appreciate the update on your results today and look forward to more developments as they come through for Neometals.
Christopher Reed: Thanks, Lel.
Ends