Alloy Resources Believes Buyback puts Gold Project in Better Place
THE CONFERENCE CALLER: Speaking at the RIU Explorers Conference in Fremantle, Alloy Resources (ASX: AYR) Executive Chairman Andrew Viner was optimistic the company is ready to start moving forward after an extended down period. By Jack Baker
“What we’ve tried to do with Alloy is get quality projects,” he told the conference audience.
“We’ve got projects adjacent to major world-class mining centres, we’ve got large land holdings, really good geology, established mineralisation and in all cases are underexplored.
“We’re looking for gold which remains fabulous, particularly in Australia.
“We’ve got a very exciting new high-grade discovery that’s happened next door.
“We’ve got multiple exploration targets that are ready to go with no impediments apart from lots of rain.”
Alloy Resources managed to buyback 11 per cent of its Horse Well Joint Venture from partner Doray Minerals (ASX: DRM) for $500,000 in order to attain a 51 per cent majority stake and retake control of the project in January, which Viner believes could become one of Australia’s premier gold mines.
The venture involves 1000 square kilometres of greenstone belt just 50 kilometres north of Northern Star’s 220,000 ounce per annum Jundee gold mine in the Wiluna district.
The company had been relatively dormant for the past 16 months during a lack of funding.
“There was no risk capital, the bad old days, unlike today,” Viner explained.
“We couldn’t find the funding and had to farm it out.”
Speaking later to The Resources Roadhouse, Viner said now that Alloy has the project back it can return to mining highly graded prospects that were too small for Doray to look at.
“Doray was looking for a big standalone…trying to find a million ounce, two-million-ounce deposit,” he said.
“We can go back to these highly graded prospects that have always been there that are perfect for Alloy.”
He also mentioned that with the project returned to the company’s management it could deal with larger players that were less likely to speak with a competitor in Doray.
“We can talk to Northern Star now,” Viner declared.
“The main thing for us is to create value that is going to get our share price up, play the game, maybe we end up being a target for Northern Star…we can do that, Doray couldn’t really do that.”
Viner pointed out that Doray possessing a clawback option in the case of a major discovery isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
“If that happens I’d be quite happy being free carried at 49 per cent, he said.
“Ee made sure that if there’s smaller discoveries we can develop them.
“There’s no impediment to us finding and developing smaller deposits.”
Viner said the Celia shear going through the middle of the greenstone belt was a major focus for the company.
“The Celia Shear actually has 300,000 ounces, it’s a bit deep and there’s quite a lot of depletion through there, but there’s a lot of gold,” he said.
“You combine that with our Horse Well deposits and you’ve already got yourself a mineralised structure with 380,000 ounces on it.”
The recent discovery of the Coralie Jean prospect was a cause of excitement for Viner.
“Lo and behold a little company called Overland Resources made a discovery late last year…it’s located in an exploration license that we completely surround,” Viner said.
“Fifty-five samples have averaged 17.3 grams of gold per tonne, it goes over 400 metres, an absolutely brilliant prospect-type discovery.”
Viner also touched on the company’s large cobalt and gold endowment near Broken Hill.
“Of course, cobalt is a very high demand metal for battery technology…you might have heard of Cobalt Blue, they have an absolutely huge deposit, 50,000 tonnes of cobalt,” he said.
“It really has a very good chance of being a major cobalt development in Australia, fortuitously Alloy landed with a 100 per cent-owned very large block of land right in the middle with the same geology and some signs of mineralisation.
“I didn’t really get a chance to stress that we have a great chance of finding something,
“Because the two players either side of us are at pre-feasibility stage, I’m really exploring to find more high-grade feed for those things…I can definitely add value there as well.
“We’ve got a really hot exploration project there, I hope you can see that, we’ve got the board that can do it.
“We’re in gold, we’re in cobalt: great places to be, we’ve got seriously strategic projects, we’ve got really big targets, we’re well funded, we’ve got a lot of support and there’s going to be a lot of activity over the coming year.”
Email: info@alloyres.com
Website: www.alloyres.com
