• Alma Metals secures drill contractor for resource upgrade drilling at its Briggs copper JV
  • Contractor iDrilling Australia will take part of its fees – up to $240,000 – in ALM shares at 1.2c, a 33% premium to 10-day VWAP
  • Drilling will seek to upgrade Briggs resource to the higher confidence indicated category
  • Upgraded resource will support scoping study later this year

 

Special Report: Alma Metals has appointed a drill contractor for the upcoming core drilling program at its large-scale Briggs copper project in central Queensland to upgrade resources and collect material for metallurgical testing.

Where it gets interesting is that contractor iDrilling Australia has agreed to take up to $240,000 of their fees in Alma Metals’ (ASX:ALM) shares at price of 1.2c per share, a 33% premium to the 10-day volume weighted average price.

This is an indicator that iDrilling is confident about the company’s plan to upgrade resources at Briggs, already one of the largest copper and moly deposits in Australia with an inferred resource of 415Mt grading 0.25% copper and 31 parts per million molybdenum.

 

Resource upgrade

The initial 2000m drill program will test the southwest part of the large geochemical anomaly at the Briggs Central inferred resource.

This will infill the spacing to 80m over a significant portion of the resource with the goal of upgrading resources to the higher confidence indicated category, which will allow for mine planning and support a scoping study later this year.

It will also test for higher grades in the top 200m from surface as demonstrated by the previous round of drilling on the northeast side of the Briggs Central resource.

Additionally, samples from the drilling will provide material for metallurgical test-work, which will contribute to the Briggs scoping study.

 

Briggs JV

ALM is earning up to 70% in the project under its joint venture with Canterbury Resources (ASX:CBY).

It currently holds 30% and needs to spend a further $1.5m on exploration and evaluation to take its stake up to 51%.

ALM can then increase its ownership of the project to the full 70% by spending a further $10m by 30 June 2032.

 

Alma Metals ASX ALM
Planned drill holes at Briggs in yellow. Pic: Alma Metals

 

Road ahead

ALM expects to receive initial assays from the resource upgrade drilling in August.

It also plans to carry out resource expansion drilling for the Southern Porphyry target.

 

 

 

This article was developed in collaboration with Alma Metals, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.

 

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.

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