THE INSIDE STORY: While a lot of juniors have put the drill bit on the shelf, Perth-based Impact Minerals (ASX: IPT) has maintained the exploration rage on the company’s diverse exploration projects.

A recent Explorer Quarterly Cash Update report from accounting and advisory firm BDO identified one in 10 ASX-listed exploration companies did not carry out any exploration during the 2014 June quarter.

“This is a very telling statistic, showing that a material portion of the ASX-listed explorers are not doing what their ‘mum and dad investors’ would be expecting them to do,” the BDO report noted.

“Investing in exploration companies has always been a more risky use of capital than investing in more stable businesses, but for companies that are not exploring at all, there is no possibility of any reward to investors for that risk.

“If this situation continues, finding investors for companies classified as ‘explorers’ will become more and more difficult.”

In July this year Impact Minerals overcame that perceived difficulty to announce an oversubscribed $2.59 million capital raising through a placement of approximately 78.4 million shares at an issue price of 3.3 cents per share.

The funds raised were earmarked to fund drilling at the company’s high-grade precious and base metal Commonwealth and Broken Hill projects in New South Wales.

“This was an important result for us and our shareholders,” Impact Minerals managing director Dr Mike Jones told The Resources Roadhouse.

“In this very difficult time for junior exploration companies we were looking to raise between $2 million and $2.5 million so to close oversubscribed was an indication of the faith our shareholders have in our New South Wales projects.

“The Board’s decision was that we had to cut costs where we could with the intention of keeping up the momentum with our exploration programs, because that’s what we’re about.

“We have been rewarded for this by being able to raise sufficient funds to carry out some serious exploration activities.”

The raising ensured Impact was fully-funded for the maiden drill program at its 100 per cent-owned Commonwealth gold, silver and base metals project, located 100 kilometres north of Orange in NSW.

The program tested a number of targets identified by Impact for high-grade gold-silver base metal mineralisation at the project’s Main Shaft, Commonwealth South and Silica Hill prospects as well as the Coronation Trend and has provided a great deal of encouraging results from the get go.

So much so Impact immediately extended the 2,500 metre program by 500m after initial assays confirmed extensions of the deposit at the Commonwealth South prospect.

As the program progressed results continued to extend the high-grade, near surface deposit.

Reverse circulation (RC) drill results include:

7 metres at 25.5 grams per tonne gold, 62g/t silver, 3.8 per cent zinc, 1.6 per cent lead and 0.1 per cent copper from 88m down hole; and

21m at 2.9g/t gold, 21.6g/t silver, 1.2 per cent zinc and 0.6 per cent lead from 53m.

“These are significant gold results and we continue to be very encouraged that we could be looking at the discovery of a major deposit at Commonwealth,” Jones said.

“This is the first systematic drill program we have conducted beneath the near surface high-grade mineralisation.

“Our intention was to define the orientation of the mineralisation in order to allow further step out drilling at depth and the results we have received have demonstrated this is being achieved.”

Needless to say Impact was excited by the first discovery of massive sulphide mineralisation at Commonwealth South, however what really has the company dancing on hot coals is the potential the deposit has shown for further extensions to the south and at depth.

The company has programmed further ground IP and soil geochemistry surveys to assist in the definition of follow up drill targets.

As far as maiden drilling programs go this one has delivered in spades so far, yet has only tested a very small part of the 20km long mineralised trend within Impact’s licences, which includes the recently-identified and undrilled Doughnut target 2km to the north, which has returned strong copper-in-soil responses and has subsequently been identified as a priority target for follow up work including IP surveys.

While all this has been going on Impact has been preparing another maiden drill program, this time at the Broken Hill nickel-copper-PGE project, also in NSW.

Impact recently earned a 51 per cent interest in the rights to nickel-copper-PGE mineralisation from Golden Cross Resources (ASX: GCR) at the Broken Hill Joint Venture project, which was recently awarded a grant of $125,000 under the NSW State Government’s Co-operative Drilling Funding Program.

The company is eager to complete earning 80 per cent of the metal rights by spending a further $200,000, which it has to complete by 2017, however it is anticipated this expenditure will be met during the forthcoming drill program to be conducted at the Red Hill prospect.

The Red Hill prospect occurs within an ultramafic intrusive unit, which outcrops over an area of about 500 square metres with a nickel-rich core and copper-precious metal-rich margins – a feature common in many major nickel-copper-precious metal sulphide deposits around the world.

“This is a priority area for drilling,” Jones said.

“Both the western and, in particular, the eastern margins of the unit are marked by copper-in-soil up to 200 metres wide and 600 metres long.

“Within these margins are a further three priority areas for follow up work covering several hundred square metres and which contain rock chip samples with high-grade nickel, copper and precious metal assays.”

Impact completed a soil geochemistry survey, which has been submitted for analysis by the MMI partial digest (nickel and copper) and fire assay (platinum, palladium, gold and silver), while follow up detailed mapping as well as further rock chip sampling have also recently been completed at Red Hill.

An Induced Polarisation ground geophysical has also commenced.

The results of all of this work will be integrated to define specific drill targets for the program scheduled to commence in November 2014 subject to statutory approvals, the documentation for which has been lodged with the relevant government department.

From the east coast Impact has still managed to keep a close eye on its Mulga Tank project, located on the Minigwal greenstone belt in the eastern part of the Yilgarn Craton in Western Australia.

The company has identified twelve new priority target areas for nickel-copper and copper-gold deposits at Mulga Tank following a review of a broad spaced ionic leach soil geochemistry survey covering the central part of the 425sqkm project area.

Six of the targets occur on the west side of the project area, along strike and adjacent to the Mulga Tank Dunite where Impact discovered nickel and copper mineralisation under about 50m of transported cover.

Impact considers the Mulga Tank project to be prospective for nickel and copper sulphide deposits similar to the Perseverance (45Mt at 2% nickel) and Rocky’s Reward (9.6 Mt at 2.4% Nickel) mines near Leinster.

Its belief stems from the Mulga Tank Dunite, which is similar to the host for the Perseverance nickel deposit as well as the host unit to the Mount Keith disseminated nickel deposit, which contains more than 2 million tonnes of nickel metal.

Impact Minerals Limited (ASX: IPT)
…The Short Story

HEAD OFFICE
26 Richardson Street
West Perth WA 6005

Phone: (61 8) 6454 6666
Facsimile: (61 8) 6454 6667

Email: info@impactminerals.com.au
Website: www.impactminerals.com.au

DIRECTORS and MANAGEMENT
Peter Unsworth, Dr Mike Jones, Paul Ingram, Dr Markus Elsasser, James Cooper-Jones, Leo Horn

MAJOR SHAREHOLDERS
Bunnenberg Family 30%
Directors 11%
Aviana Holdings 2.3%

THE INSIDE STORY: Having raised $10 million on the back of a most audacious project acquisition, junior exploration play Cassini Resources (ASX: CZI) wasted no time in kicking off a comprehensive drilling campaign.

The company commenced its maiden drilling campaign at the 100 per cent-owned West Musgrave project in Western Australia just six months after acquiring it from BHP Billiton Nickel West and BHP Billiton Minerals, two subsidiaries of global mining powerhouse BHP Billiton (ASX: BHP).

The West Musgrave project contains the Nebo and Babel sister deposits, commonly referred to as Nebo‐Babel, the Succoth copper exploration prospect plus a number of prospective exploration targets.

Nebo‐Babel currently has an Inferred resource 446 million tonnes at 0.33 per cent nickel and 0.35 per cent copper (0.2 per cent nickel cut‐off) for 1.47 million tonnes of contained nickel and 1.56 million tonnes of contained copper.

“BHP originally approached the project with the intention it would become a large large‐scale, low‐grade production model,” Cassini Resources managing director Richard Bevan told The Resources Roadhouse.

“We have said from the start that, as a junior exploration company, we intend taking a different approach with the project differently, as a high-grade opportunity –a much smaller project than what BHP originally envisaged.

“That being the case we are now out there drilling with the expectation of being able to really get in there and define that high-grade ore body.”

Drilling commenced at the Nebo and Babel deposits on 2 September 2014 aiming to prove up continuity of massive nickel-copper sulphide lenses and high‐grade disseminated zones.

The drilling is also intended to upgrade a large portion of the current Inferred Resource to the Indicated category.

Cassini’s $10 million capital raising is being put to good use with the program to consist of approximately 25,000 metres of reverse circulation (RC) drilling and approximately 700m of diamond core drilling in a combination of infill and exploratory step‐out drilling.

At the time of writing the company had received assay results from the first four RC drill holes at Nebo, which provided it with a great deal of encouragement by intersecting anticipated high‐grade nickel and copper.

The drilling intersected – what is known as – the Marginal Breccia Zone (MBZ), which hosts the massive sulphides that have previously revealed higher‐grade nickel and copper.

The drilling also intersected wide zones of disseminated sulphide mineralisation beneath the MBZ, with grades of nickel and copper high enough to form a significant portion of the current estimated mineral resource.

Nebo-Babel is a shallow, large tonnage open pittable nickel sulphide orebody, and as such Cassini has determined a resource grade of greater than 0.7 per cent nickel and 0.6 per cent copper to be on the mark.

In light of this, the company is fairly chuffed with the assay results it received from the first four drill holes at the project, which included:

WMC0015
28m at 1.38 per cent nickel and 0.87 per cent copper from 63m, including 6m at 3.40 per cent nickel and 0.96 per cent copper from 84m;

WMC0004
29m at 1.00 per cent nickel and 0.61 per cent copper from 56m, including 2m at 3.12 per cent nickel and 1.07 per cent copper from 81m.

It is worth noting drill hole WMC0015 intersected the thickest and highest grade mineralisation to have been drilled to date on Section 371900E, easily clearing the previous best historical intercept of 16m at 0.84 per cent nickel and 0.56 per cent copper.

The result achieved by WMC0004 met the company’s expectations, having been drilled 50m down-dip from a further historical hole – WMN11, which returned 19m at 2.16 per cent nickel and 1.09 per cent copper.

The other two holes to be assayed so far, WMC0014 (11m at 0.19 per cent nickel and 0.45 per cent copper) and WMC0002 (broad anomalous zone less than 0.4 per cent nickel) returned intersections indicating the presence of broad, lower‐grade disseminated mineralisation beneath the MBZ.

Although they may not be as exciting as the results from the other two holes these are also in line with expectations as they were drilled on the periphery of the current high‐grade resource model.

“That we have intersected the best mineralisation so far supports the company’s belief that the previous drill spacing on nominal 200 metre centres was too broad to define a continuous core of higher ‐grade mineralisation,” Bevan said.

“These initial results support not only the existing resource model, but also demonstrates the potential of a higher‐grade core of mineralisation that could support an economic open pit mining operation.

“Any future results of this magnitude of nickel and copper mineralisation in both the MBZ and disseminated zones, will further demonstrate how close the company is to being able to deliver these objectives.”

Cassini is convinced further drilling at the Nebo deposit will demonstrate the continuity of higher‐grade mineralisation, at depths amenable to open pit mining methods.

The company remains confident it will deliver a maiden Indicated Resource at the end of the current drilling program.

The current higher grade Inferred Resource estimate for Nebo stands at 33.2 million tonnes at 0.73 per cent nickel and 0.59 per cent copper using a 0.5 per cent nickel cut‐off grade.

Since Cassini last visited The Roadhouse it has added some expertise to its management team.

Exploration manager, Dr Zoran Seat is a former exploration manager for Norilsk.

Dr Seat has a Bachelor of Science in Geology and a PhD in Geology.

Serendipitously, his PhD thesis focussed on Nebo‐Babel, examining the geology and nickel-copper‐PGE mineralisation of the Nebo‐Babel intrusion.

On completion of his PhD, Dr Seat worked as a geoscientist for BHP Billiton at the West Musgrave project.

Consultant mineralogist Ben Grguric also has impressive form as a geologist and mineralogist having worked for Western Mining and BHP.

While at BHP, Grguric played a major role in unravelling the geology and mineralogy of the Mt Keith nickel deposit.

He is regarded as a world leader in deposit mineralogy and its link with processing technology, particularly disseminated low‐grade nickel sulphide deposits.

“We have established a great team with a wealth of knowledge of the Nebo-Babel project, which we believe will stand us in good stead going forwards,” Bevan said.

Forwards seems to be the only direction Cassini is willing to contemplate for now with RC Drilling continuing at a steady pace and 42 holes now completed at Nebo where two rigs are currently on‐site.

Results from all other holes are still pending with numerous batches currently being processed at the assay laboratory.

A diamond core rig is just being mobilise to site, which will drill seven large‐diameter (PQ) holes through mineralised zones at Nebo and Babel to collect samples for metallurgical test work, which the company considers to be another key component of the project’s development strategy.

The final component of Cassini’s current exploration program for the Nebo-Babel project will be a RC/DD program to be carried out at the satellite Succoth copper prospect.

This work will be undertaken towards the end of the exploration program with the aim of increase the company’s current geological knowledge of the Succoth deposit.

The work will be specifically targeting near surface high-grade zones Cassini has identified to have the potential to contribute to the Nebo‐Babel development model.

Cassini Resources Limited (CZI)
…The Short Story

HEAD OFFICE
945 Wellington Street
West Perth WA 6005

Phone: +61 8 9322 7600
Fax: + 61 8 9322 7602

Email: admin@cassiniresources.com.au

Web: www.cassiniresources.com.au

DIRECTORS and MANAGEMENT
Mike Young, Richard Bevan, David Johnson, Dr Jon Hronsky, Phil Warren, Greg Miles

MAJOR SHAREHOLDERS
Directors         12.2%
Cornela Pty Ltd     5.5%
Top 40        49.6%