Investigator Resources (ASX: IVR) managing director Andrew Shearer talks up silver during the current gold rush with Wally Graham on Day One of the 2025 RIU Sydney Resources Roundup.
THE CONFERENCE CALLER: “Silver demand is skyrocketing” due to increasing industrial and green energy demand, Investigator Resources (ASX: IVR) managing director Andrew McIlwain told the 2023 RIU Sydney Resources Round-up.
The silver price has risen about 20 per cent over the past year to circa US$26 an ounce or A$38 per ounce.
The silver market was going through structural changes, McIlwain told Resources Roadhouse on the sidelines, referring to recent figures from the Silver Institute showing the market had achieved its second consecutive annual structural deficit.
Demand reached a new high of 1.24 billion ounces in 2022, according to the Institute, while global mine production fell to 822.4 million ounces, creating “possibly the most significant deficit on record”.
Investigator is advancing the Paris project in South Australia, which it describes as the country’s highest-grade undeveloped silver project.
Paris contains 53 million ounces of silver and 98,000 tonnes of lead, which McIlwain said in gold terms equated roughly to a 700,000oz gold project.
Recent results from Paris South included “the highest 1m silver assay” from Investigator’s 2022/23 drilling program, of 1m at 2,410 grams per tonne silver within 25m at 207g/t form 73m.
The company expects to announce a resource update in June and a definitive feasibility study early next year that will include Paris’ lead potential, unlike a 2021 prefeasibility study which focused on silver only.
Investigator has also stepped into the critical minerals space, recently gaining the option to earn into Thor Energy’s Molyhil tungsten and molybdenum project in the Northern Territory.
McIlwain told the conference the molybdenum price had risen substantially from the US$15 a pound used in Molyhil’s 2018 DFS, to about $60/lb.
THE DRILL SERGEANT: Investigator Resources (ASX: IVR) completed three reverse circulation percussion(RCP) holes to test the Trojan Induced Polarisation target within the company’s 100 per cent-owned Peterlumbo tenement in South Australia.
The tenements are five kilometres southeast of Investigator Resources’ 42 million-ounce Paris silver project.
Investigator drilled the three 400m-spaced reverse circulation percussion in mid-February 2018 to test the large Trojan IP target.
The drilling intersected pyritic metasediments without visible copper sulphide.
Investigator said the pyritic metasediment can be interpreted as the southern pyritic halo to Nankivel porphyry system and, as a result, has revised the location of the project’s central copper-prospective zone.
The company is now awaiting assay results to allow it to investigate metal ratio vectors to potential adjacent targets.
For now, Investigator’s focus will continue to advance the Paris silver project with.
Upcoming work to follow a four-hole program of deeper RCP drilling completed last week in the prospective south-eastern Paris extension will consist assessment of an Induced Polarisation survey completed in early February for satellite silver targets with further drilling planned in March at Paris and satellite targets.
“The drilling showed the strongest IP anomaly in the Nankivel porphyry system results from pyrite in network fractures and quartz veining and is interpreted as the outer pyritic zone to the system,” Investigator Resources managing director John Anderson said in the company’s announcement to the Australian Securities Exchange.
“This implies the drilling has overstepped any copper-prospective centre to the system, north of and most likely significantly deeper than the recent drilling.
“Investigator will not undertake any further sole exploration on the Nankivel project.
“A Joint Venture partner will be sought to fund further exploration.
“Investigator will continue to focus on the nearby Paris silver project.
“Following the Trojan program, four holes were also recently completed with the larger RCP drill rig in the south-eastern Paris extension zone.
“Assays are awaited.”
Email: info@investres.com.au
Website: www.investres.com.au
