Antipa Minerals Ltd (ASX:AZY) has identified a ‘very large’ coherent gold and pathfinder anomaly from a geochemical sampling program at the Wilki Farm-in Project close to Newmont’s giant Telfer gold-copper-silver mine in Western Australia's Paterson Province.
Known as Parklands, the new “high-impact” gold target has a geochemical sample lag result of 1.52 g/t gold with multiple results greater than 0.1 g/t gold.
FY2024 exploration at the Wilki Farm-in Project is fully funded by Newmont as part of an existing A$60 million farm-in agreement.
Investors have welcomed the news with Antipa shares as much as 21.43% higher in ASX trading to $0.017. This quarter shares have traded in the range of $0.011 to $0.018.
A steady pipeline of assay results for Antipa's partnered projects is expected over the coming months, which will be incorporated into planning for the CY2024 exploration programs.
“High-impact” exploration target
Antipa managing director Roger Mason said: “One of the highly favourable characteristics of our tenure is the shallow depth of cover, which is just enough to conceal, yet still enables detection (via geophysics and soil sampling) of potentially world-class gold-copper deposits.
“Recent geochemical sample results at Wilki enabled us to identify a new, very large gold anomaly proximate to Newmont’s giant Telfer gold-copper-silver mine and processing facility.
“Lag samples returned strongly anomalous gold results, up to 1.52 g/t, which are coincident with other pathfinder anomalism and show a strong correlation with obvious structures and interpreted alteration in the aeromagnetic data.
“We are very excited by the opportunity at Parklands, which provides another high-impact exploration target that has the potential to grow further in scale from an already impressive size.”
Satellite image plan showing the Wilki Farm-in Project’s Parklands surface geochemical gold anomaly.
Citadel JV
At the Citadel JV Project with Rio Tinto (ASX:RIO), 13 holes have been completed for 1,943 metres of RC drilling at the Rimfire Southwest target and two Junction targets.
The A$2.1 million CY2023 exploration program spend is fully funded by Rio Tinto and operated by Antipa.
The Rimfire Southwest target is an interpreted synformal fold hinge, with RC drilling intersecting metasediment and amphibolite lithologies hosting several zones of low-grade copper mineralisation.
No significant mineralisation was intersected at Junction.
Antipa's joint venture interest is to dilute from 32.6% to 31.6% at Antipa’s election, upon CY2023 program completion and assuming the entire budgeted amount is spent.
Paterson farm-in project
At the Paterson farm-in with IGO Ltd, the FY2024 program saw the start of direct drill testing of high-priority gold-copper targets generated by regional-style exploration activities undertaken over the past three years.
The program is operated by IGO and is planned to comprise up to 9,000 metres of total drilling.
Assay results are pending for the 6,623 metres of the program completed to date.
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