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Andrew Todd
Orbit Resources has capped off the latest drilling campaign at its Lewis Ponds gold-silver-zinc project in New South Wales with a bang, intersecting a thick 28.1-metre zone of visual sulphide mineralisation in the program’s final hole.
The company says the hole drilled into its Spicer’s Lode hit the zone from 199.5m downhole, with sections containing visual estimates of up to 34 per cent semi-massive sulphides.
An old shaft entrance at Orbit Resources’ Lewis Ponds precious and base metals project, in the prolific Lachlan Fold Belt of New South Wales.
The intersection marks the successful completion of a four-hole resource development program, with assays for all holes, including a 3.55-metre hit at a whopping 50 per cent estimated massive sulphides, due shortly.
Those sulphide minerals can host substantial concentrations of zinc, lead and copper – with some carrying up to 86 per cent of their respective base metal by weight – alongside the potential for valuable gold and silver credits.
‘Assays are needed to confirm grades and widths, but the program has delivered what it was designed to do.’
Orbit Resources managing director Jeneta Owens
The drilling program was designed to lift confidence in Lewis Ponds’ existing mineral resource by upgrading sections to the higher indicated category, while also supplying fresh core for metallurgical testwork.
That resource already hosts a formidable polymetallic base, sitting at 17.52 million tonnes grading 1.12 grams per tonne (g/t) gold, 53.34g/t silver, 2.06 per cent zinc and 1.1 per cent lead with copper credits. In contained terms, that works out at roughly 630,000 ounces of gold and 30.1 million ounces of silver.
The company says its visual logging of the final hole identified a polymetallic sulphide assemblage of pyrite, sphalerite, galena, chalcopyrite and pyrrhotite, noting that three of the four holes drilled at its Tom’s and Spicer’s Lodes intersected visual sulphides.
Orbit Resources managing director Jeneta Owens said: “Assays are needed to confirm grades and widths, but the program has delivered what it was designed to do, which was to test the continuity of the lodes within the existing resource and provide fresh core for our next round of metallurgical testwork.”
While drilling is aimed at growing the resource, a scoping study released in February has already put some impressive numbers around Lewis Ponds, outlining a base-case pre-tax net present value of $481 million and an internal rate of return of 24 per cent.
However, an upside case using spot commodity prices at the time sent the potential project economics into the stratosphere, delivering a pre-tax net present value of a whopping $1.088 billion and an internal rate of return of 40 per cent.
Although Lewis Ponds remains the main game, Orbit’s Narraburra ionic-clay project offers another potentially valuable card up its sleeve, despite currently being on the backburner.
The renewed scramble for secure rare earth supply chains and the sharp repricing of Chinese-controlled elements have given the project’s yttrium-rich endowment a serious lift, putting its proven metallurgy back in the spotlight.
With low-cost, hybrid ionic-clay characteristics and a much larger prospective footprint beyond the current resource, Narraburra has plenty of room to grow. Management believes further drilling could quickly build on the existing resource, paving the way for a scoping study to test the project’s development potential and put some hard numbers around an increasingly attractive rare earths proposition.
Stage two drilling is now complete at Lewis Ponds, leaving Orbit awaiting a fresh batch of assays before turning its attention back to the project’s latest exploration eye-catcher, the Cousin Jack base metals discovery, 350 metres southeast of the existing mineral resource.
Discovery drilling in June delivered some encouraging hits, including 15m at 2.8 per cent zinc equivalent from 314m and 11m at 4.4 per cent from 584m, with a high-grade slice of 1.7m at 13.1 per cent zinc equivalent from 585.3m.
The company says the pending results will feed into an updated geological model and help guide the next steps at Cousin Jack to the south, a find that could prove a company maker for Lewis Ponds.
On paper at least, Lewis Ponds already has the makings of a feasible Lachlan Fold operation and with a potential billion-dollar price tag in its sights, the wait to get the rods spinning again will feel like a long one.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: mattbirney@bullsnbears.com.au
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