See What Sydney RIU Resources roundup Has in Store
THE CONFERENCE CALLER: The RIU Sydney Resources Roundup starts next week with over 90 companies presenting and exhibiting. Here’s a taste of what to expect.
Pan Asia Metals (ASX: PAM)
Pan Asia Metals is a battery and critical metals explorer and developer with a strategy of identifying and developing projects with potential to enable the company to produce metal compounds and other value-added products to meet the projected high-technology demand.
Pan Asia Metals has two lithium projects and one tungsten project, all located in Thailand, a jurisdiction the company has acknowledged as a low-cost advanced industrial economy that fits its strategy of developing downstream value-add opportunities in low-cost environments close to end market users.
The company’s focus of late has been on its Reung Kiet lithium project (RKLP), a hard rock lithium project with lithium chiefly hosted in lepidolite/mica rich pegmatite dykes and veins.
Reung Kiet has been subjected to previous open pit mining extracting tin and tantalum from weathered pegmatites into the early 1970s.
Pan Asia’s stated objective has been to complete sufficient drilling with the aim of increasing and converting much of the existing Inferred Mineral Resource into the Indicated and Measured categories.
The intention is to use the upgraded Mineral Resource as part of a Pre-feasibility study planned for later this year.
Recent drilling at the Reung Kiet lithium prospect has continued to support the geological model of extensive lithium mineralisation hosted in lepidolite rich pegmatite dykes-veins and adjacent metasediments.
The mineralised lithium zone is currently defined over a strike length of over one kilometre and remains open along strike to the north and south, and at depth especially in the south.
Pan Asia has now moved the drill rig to the Bang I Tum prospect where it will evaluate an existing Exploration Target and more recently reported adjacent target zones.
The company’s other projects include the Kata Thong geothermal lithium and hard rock lithium-tin project – a compilation of five Special Prospecting Licence Applications (SPLA) in the Phang Nga Province in southern Thailand.
The Khao Soon tungsten project is a wolframite style tungsten project located south of Bangkok in Nakhon Si Thammarat Province, Southern Thailand where Pan Asia holds a 100 per cent interest in two contiguous Special Prospecting Licences and one SPLA.
Torque Metals (ASX: TOR)
Torque Metals holds a portfolio of high-grade gold deposits in Western Australia, the main focus of which is the company’s 100 per cent-owned Paris gold project, located outside Kalgoorlie within the Boulder-Lefroy Fault Zone in the Western Australian Goldfields.
The Paris gold project comprises nine granted, pre-native title mining licences; two prospecting licences; and three exploration licences covering a total area of 176 square kilometres.
Torque considers the project to be vastly underexplored, as past drilling by previous owners was generally restricted to the top 50 metres.
Torque is of the opinion this provides plenty of opportunities for discovery of gold mineralisation through the application of modern-day exploration techniques and by undertaking more extensive, and deeper, drilling.
To that end, the company has already carried out five drilling campaigns at Paris with the objective of better defining the zones most likely to rapidly increase the project’s gold resource base.
Torque has, to date, discovered six different prospects within the 2.5 kilometres Paris Gold Camp.
The company recently commenced a new round of drilling on the Paris, Observation and HHH prospects targeting gold anomalies identified from historical drilling, machine learning algorithms, and geological models.
A diamond drilling campaign is aiming to extend known mineralised zones and to further delineate mineralisation.
This will coincide with infill and extensional RC drilling seeking information on the continuity and distribution of gold mineralisation.
The drilling follows up assay results released earlier this year that Torque claimed to clearly support the high-grade mineralisation structures and the concept of a potential Gold Camp at Paris.
“The results are highly encouraging and, importantly, show all gold rich prospects lining up in a north, north-westerly orientation, further supporting the potential of a ‘Paris Gold Camp’,” Torque Metals managing director Cristian Moreno said.
“Significantly, the successful holes between HHH and Paris suggest a mineralised structure potentially linking the 1.5 kilometres distance among the two deposits.
“Additionally, while further high-grade north of HHH indicates a potential rich-gold open pit deposit between HHH and Observation (1km), the substantial grades westwards of the Paris prospect confirm a consistent mineralised body that is still open to the west and at depth.”
Lanthanein Resources (ASX: LNR)
Lanthanein Resources could be categorized as the epitome of the modern exploration company with its focus on rare earth elements and kaolin.
Recent activity across the portfolio saw commencement of drilling at the Murraydium project in South Australia.
The company is investigating what it sees as an exciting exploration opportunity in a region that is considered highly prospective for ionic clay hosted rare earth deposits.
Lanthanein is following on from previous work done in the region by Australian Rare Earths that outlined an extensive mineralised system where shallow near surface exploration has demonstrated potential to delineate substantial JORC Resources of REEs.
At the time of writing, Lanthanein Resources had announced completion of two surveys in preparation for upcoming exploration programs at the Lyons rare earths project in Western Australia.
The company intimated the proposed drill programs will target new high‐grade ironstones similar to what has previously been encountered by drilling at Lyons 11, 12, 13 and 27 prospects.
“Additional drilling of the existing discoveries at Lyons 12, 13 and 27, which are approx. two kilometres from Hastings Technology Metals’ Frasers and Simons Find pits will allow the progress to a potential resource estimation,” Lanthanein Resources technical director Brian Thomas said.
“Drilling the multiple new ironstone trends under shallow cover only recently identified from our review of geophysics will add significantly to the exploration and resource potential.
“We also plan to diamond drill test the magnetic rims of two of the large‐scale Carbonatites.”
Lanthanein recently reported brightness results from a first pass aircore drilling program at its Koolya kaolin project in WA.
The company completed a wide spaced drill program in December 2022, with drillholes spaced 500m apart, covering 15km of prospective kaolin rich granite and intersected widespread kaolin of varying thickness, with a best result of 30m thick bright white kaolin from 4m depth.
“The exceptional brightness results in samples from our first pass aircore drilling at Koolya project is a great result,” Thomas said.
“There is a significant areal extent of high quality bright white kaolin to support the potential for a significant kaolin resource and high purity alumina feedstock project to be delineated with further drilling.”