Taiton Resources Ltd (ASX:T88) started trading on the ASX after raising A$7 million to fund exploration activities across its three projects - Highway and Challenger West in South Australia and Lake Barlee in Western Australia.
The exploration and development company has kicked off activities on the Highway Project by initiating the request for heritage surveys ahead of field mapping, surface sampling and geophysical surveys.
Source: Taiton Resources.
Taiton has selected a contractor to conduct induced polarisation (IP), resistivity and magnetotelluric (MT) surveys for the Merino and Angus Prospects within the Highway project.
The geophysical survey will be conducted after a detailed heritage survey has been completed. Taiton is aiming to complete the geophysical survey within the first quarter of 2023.
Surface sampling and mapping are expected be completed in the first quarter of 2023.
“Focused on giving back to the shareholders”
Taiton managing director Noel Ong said: “We are delighted to have completed the listing process on the ASX.
“The team has worked incredibly hard to complete the process.
“Now we are totally focused on giving back to the shareholders who have supported and invested in our story.
“Our exploration plans have started, and we are wasting no time in getting the planning ready for more intense exploration activities in the coming 2023.
“We have completed our Heritage Agreement on the Highway project and in doing that, it has allowed the company to fast track exploration activities in preparation for a drilling program in 2023. “
Highway Project
The company has set its sight on advancing the Highway Project, situated about 590 kilometres from the state capital of Adelaide.
Taiton’s target evaluation of the Merino Prospect within the project has identified the potential for large-scale molybdenum-enriched polymetallic porphyry overlooked by prior explorers.
Notably, the evaluation of the data shows that Merino is potentially tapping the source rocks that feed the Olympic Dam IOCG Belt.
This is impressive given that the Olympic Dam IOCG Belt hosts the multi-billion-dollar Olympic Dam mine, one of the largest copper deposits in the world.
Zircons indicating Olympic Metallurgical Event
The zircon geochronological work completed by Taiton provides compelling evidence for not only an extension to the OME (Olympic Metallurgical Event) Domain, but also that Merino itself is likely a shallow hydrothermal system (ie, by way of the zircon isotope analyses).
The zircons analysed which was extracted from the porphyritic granite (as shallow as 7m depth), appear indicative of hydrothermal mixing of fluids concentrated in lead, uranium and REEs (rare earth elements).
Importantly, Taiton has identified very shallow basement from the historical drilling data (Figure 1), with most of the holes indicating a depth of less than 20 metres.
Figure 1 - Previous exploration results for the Merino Prospect-Highway Polymetallic Project. The area is suspected to form part of a rift complex containing porphyry systems and coeval with the OME according to recent geochronological dating by the company.
Lake Barlee Project
The Lake Barlee Project in Western Australia is situated on the Yilgarn block and lies 293 kilometres north of the mining town of Southern Cross.
The project tenements lie predominantly on an intermittent playa salt lake, the second largest in Western Australia.
The Yuimery Shear Zone which defines a highly prospective granite-greenstone boundary and is one of the principal exploration targets, along with a fault splay off the Youanmi Fault.
Both faulted and shear-zone structures seem to have formed as a competency (rheology) contrast between granite-greenstone contacts.
These spatial and temporal relationships across highly strained zones hosting compressional folding, traditionally act as mineralising conduits for concentrated hydrothermal fluid flow.
Challenger West
The Challenger West Prospect lies about 190 kilometres northwest of the Highway Prospect, west of the Challenger Mine.
Taiton’s primary source of confidence in being situated in the Challenger region, besides its proximity to an existing mining district, is due to the presence of gravity highs found in the same basement terrane setting as the Challenger deposit.
The Challenger gold camp is well understood, and Taiton is well-placed to capitalise on the vast amount of historic data available in the public domain and on SARIG.
Taiton believes that the existing data, which has a good historical indicator of district-scale mineralisation, supports a strategy for a new discovery at Challenger West.