Greatland Gold plc (AIM: GGP), announce the commencement of the 2022 exploration programme at its 100% owned projects in the highly prospective Paterson province of Western Australia.
Shaun Day, Managing Director of Greatland Gold plc, commented: ” We are excited to accelerate Greatland’s exploration programme and commence on the ground activities at our 100% owned projects in the Paterson province of Western Australia, regarded as one of the world’s most prospective frontiers for the discovery of multi-cycle, tier-one gold-copper deposits.
“The 2022 campaign at Scallywag follows encouraging exploration results reported last year, where four of seven holes intercepted gold mineralisation. The maiden drill programme at our newly acquired Pascalle and Rudall tenements is equally significant with Rudall considered to be prospective for Havieron and Telfer style gold-copper occurrences, while Pascalle sits directly between the two world class discoveries of Havieron and Telfer.
“We look forward to unlocking value by systematically progressing exploration through these Havieron and Telfer like priority targets to take advantage of our strong position in this prospective region. ”
Notes from Shaun Day Interview with SI Capital
* Hello and welcome to an SI Capital podcast today, I have Shaun Day of GGP, hi Shaun thanks for joining us
– Hi Charlie good to catch up again and thanks very much for having me on today
* Thanks for coming on, so yesterday you came up with an announcement about your exploration activities over in Paterson so I was hoping to catch up a little bit, catch up, hear a little bit about what you’ve been doing over there and what we should be expecting as investors in GGP from these particular activities that you’re doing?
– yeah thanks Charlie, look you know what we’re trying to do with our exploration program is unlock some of this option value in our portfolio the best place to look for gold and copper is where it’s already been found and the Paterson is elephant country you know, you have Havieron which is absolutely world-class, Telfer down the road again, a top-five Australian asset for three decades and then up to the north you have Rio Tinto’s Winu project.
– so our program is designed to try to test high-quality targets and unlock that value for our shareholders, we’re excited about this year’s program and yeah there are some high-quality targets in the portfolio which will be tested not just this year but over several years but we’re really excited about this year’s program particularly
* So reading into this RNS through most explorers well A) they’ve got a lot of, a lot of outcrops but also the traditional way is just to plug holes into these targets because these are geophysical targets you’ve got, you don’t seem to be doing that, there’s a bit more technical analysis going on rather than just plugging away?
– yeah Charlie look I think when you think about the way GGP approaches exploration, it’s very technically led and what I mean from that is we’re really doing our work from first principles, we’re building up our geological understanding, we’re doing a lot of you know geophysical work to refine our targeting process and what we’re trying to do is target or test a high number of targets so what we tend to do is rather than you know having a target, punching 15 holes into it and running that to the ground in one hit, what we will do is put one maybe two holes into a broader range of targets, then we will take that information, reassess reprocess that information and refine our understanding of the target
– it’s a very technically led process, I think we are highly respected for the way we go about this and it means firstly we’re able to cover a larger number of targets in a program but also it makes it a very cost-efficient way of understanding your broader portfolio, so we’re very comfortable with that approach and we think it’s a very high-quality approach
* You’re in a quite unique position I guess from most explorers being that you have made, can we use the word world-class but it is a top-quality asset that you’ve discovered, that’s a great model to apply and work with in other areas so really though that was quite an amazing initial discovery, what to you though would be a success from these exploration campaigns because I’m assuming as much I would love another HAD05 within the first few holes being sunk, from your technical point of view that doesn’t, success doesn’t necessarily need to be a major mineralising intercept?
– yeah look so let me first jump in there Charlie as you use world-class and you should be absolutely confident using world-class around Havieron, so you’re right to say that now in terms of what we think about is a success with our drill campaign I think there are three potential layers of success that you can have in a drill campaign
– firstly and for mostly obviously is repeating a HAD05, now HAD05 to this day is still a top-three intercept into that the Havieron ore body, this is a 700 meter by 550 meters with you know 1.2 kilometres and the growing vertical extent and the first hole you know hit the bull’s eye
– now that is extraordinary even if you’re touching that volume with a drill bit to have actually kind of nailed the sweet spot, you’re not going to do that every time, that shouldn’t be your expectation but that is obviously the outcome where you’re popping champagne corks
– that that’s one form of success, I think the second form of success is when we hit brecciation, that’s really what we’re looking for, we’re trying to understand where we find these rocks that have you know had these events that have created the opportunity to have traps for metal and then once we’re on to those brecciated systems, it gives us a better understanding and a higher potential of finding the metal so that again whether it carries mineralization or only gives us a taste of it lets us know we’re in the system and it lets us again refine that work, reinterpret the geophysics and then refine when we come back to that target where we think we’re the best drilling
– and then the third layer of success is when we get an intercept, it’s the host rocks we’re working on we have better you know information, we understand the stratigraphy better, again we’re able to refine that and then we might say yeah on reflection we are drilling 300 meters too far south from where we now understand that geophysical target sits
– so all those are layers of success and I think in terms of what constitutes success in a broader sense you know you can’t expect every you know deposit we find to be another Havieron, you know that is a uniquely wonderful multi-decade asset
– now of course we’d love to find another one but even a half Havieron or a quarter Havieron would be a stunning opportunity and of course, because it sits near that infrastructure it would come into the JV or potentially as a 100% project in short order
– so I think success has many faces for us but I think we’re in the right postcode to give us every opportunity to deliver that success for shareholders
* Yeah I think that’s a great point that you don’t necessarily, your hurdle rate requirement for a commercial discovery right now, it’s a lot well it’s a lot smaller than Hav, Hav broke through that critical mass requirement and quite well exceeded that but it’s good to see a system like that is a big ore body and it’s just and it gives us an indication that potentially a long strike, there might be that same powerful geological processes which will show up these alterations these textures as you said about the brecciations, these trapped structures where we can be finding the gold and vectoring into where we need to or where the team needs to start looking on next but I guess one last point on the exploration areas, you do have still these other JV’s with Newcrest and you’re still operating them, can you talk a little bit about that?
– yeah so look at a couple of ways to comment on the last comments
– look when you do a relatively basic volumetric calculation on Havieron taking into account grade zonations, you can get a broad-brush understanding of a 20 million ounce full body and that’s worth pausing … on a 20 million ounce ore body
– but what we have is the area long strike to that northwest at our 100% owned Scallywag in particular and then it goes on to that JURI JV ground that you mentioned
– it’s rare something like a Havieron of that scale is an orphan so again it’s a cracking place to be looking, we have a drill rig spinning as we speak, an RC rig that’s doing effectively the pre-collars getting through the Permian layer which is a cheaper quicker and more efficient way to get that in place and then we’re going to come back in with the diamond drill rig to bring out the core
– so we’re excited about that and I talked before around the discipline of our approach to exploration that and I think that’s really respected and I think that’s always nice about respect is respect from your peers so the JURI JV is at a stage where Newcrest has a right to be the manager
– you know Newcrest is obviously a world-class mining company, one of the global majors, the fact that they are confident to allow us to continue to manage the project I think speaks volumes of our team and volumes of the discipline and the quality of our approach to exploration and I think further if you have a look at the Newcrest portfolio, there are other assets where they have taken back the managership even this calendar year and I think again our shareholders should be really, you should note that Newcrest continues to have confidence in us being that manager, I think it’s been about 12 months that they’ve extended our tenure in that position and you know and again I think it’s clear why
– and we also have other parties talking to us about exploration or strategic partnerships in the Paterson and I think that’s been a hard-won reputation obviously helped from the discovery of Havieron but also from the systematic and structured way we go through our portfolio and of course understanding all the nuances around the geology of Havieron only enhances our understanding of what we’re looking for
– so I think we have a wonderful platform a wonderful team and every opportunity to unlock that option value from within the portfolio
* Oh, it certainly gives me, it shows you a lot of…. your team’s got a very credible background and what you’re doing is credible, credible is the word I’m looking for but I can’t let you go until we mention a little bit about Havieron and any news updates there, is there something you can tell us about what’s going on the ground?
– yeah we’ll look at it in the context of an exploration update,… I think look we continue to you know to drill into Havieron
– where yeah look I shouldn’t front-run that but you know it’s an ore body that has consistently delivered and there’s we believe, it continues to give us every opportunity to do that
– we’re also looking at some of the exploration opportunities on the mining lease, so stepping outside of Havieron proper, that’s very good again finding brecciated areas, you know it makes us think that that brecciation zone is maybe bigger than we originally understood, which gives us an opportunity for satellite ore bodies
– and Charlie you mentioned before around you know having that critical scale, what you see with a lot of developments is once you have that major asset you can then bring in those satellite deposits, so whether that’s up on our, on a 100% Scallywag or Rudall or on the JURI JV or on this mining lease, it certainly lowers the economic hurdle when you actually already have the success of Havieron in situ
– and then the other one we should talk about is the decline, you know that that continues to progress, we’ve always articulated that as you get with depth there that Permian layer is not homogeneous, it becomes better firmer ground with depth and I think shareholders should continue to have that expectation
– so really pleased across that Havieron JV, we have a wonderful partner in Newcrest which I think is also you know an incredibly well respected and high-quality partner and I think we add our own unique contribution to that that joint venture and then our exploration in addition to that
– so yeah we’re well placed, yeah we’re pretty excited about how we’re travelling right now from an exploration perspective and it’s great to have the rigs spinning in the… and the team up there on site
* Well fantastic well thanks for giving us an update on yesterday’s news release and updates on the progress of the Havieron deposit discovery
– yep look thanks, Charlie, I really appreciate it and thanks to those that chose to join in or tune in to the call, really appreciate it.
Tex Link https://www.ggpchat.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=247
