Fortitude North Assays “Dramatically” Add Potential at Matsa’s Lake Carey

THE CONFERENCE CALLER: Matsa Resources (ASX: MAT) executive chairman Paul Poli had a spring in his step at the 2023 RIU Sydney Resources Round-up today, with fresh assay results he believes help demonstrate the multimillion-ounce potential at Fortitude North.

The latest results included 6m at 5.1 grams per tonne gold, within 14m at 3.4g/t from 113m.

“We think these are absolutely massive results for a [potential] open pit mine,” Poli, who is the company’s second-largest shareholder, told the conference.

The “gold company with a twist of lithium” believes Fortitude North could dramatically build the resource at its 886,000 ounce Lake Carey gold project in Western Australia’s Goldfields.

Poli told Resources Roadhouse on the sidelines it was early days at Fortitude North, where drilling has only gone to 200m deep, but they were seeing “quite substantial” similarities to AngloGold Ashanti’s nearby Sunrise Dam open pit and underground operation.

A 2021 feasibility study on Fortitude, not including Fortitude North, indicated positive cash flow of about $95 million using a $2,400/oz gold price.

Poli told delegates this would increase to $200 million using the current $3,000/oz price.

“It just needs a home for its ore and that’s what we’re addressing,” he said.

Lithium is Matsa’s second focus, added about 18 months ago, and Poli said testing had shown the company’s lepidolite and polylithionite samples were “easily processable” by Yongxing Special Materials Technology, one of China’s largest lepidolite miners and processors.

Matsa arguably holds the largest tenement applications for lithium exploration in south-east Asia of circa 2,000 square kilometres and Poli expected the granting process to begin “soon”.