Asra narrows in on northern Goldfields gold in 2025

Asra’s new CEO Paul Stephen finds himself in one of the most exciting gold jurisdictions globally
He plans to get on with drilling in the new year to expand on the existing opportunities at Kookynie East and Mt Stirling
Stephen’s goal is for the company to be one of the more active gold juniors on the ASX

Special Report: With new, highly experienced CEO Paul Stephen at the helm, Asra Minerals is finally ready to dig a little deeper across its 926km2 of territory in WA’s northern Goldfields.

The company has consolidated a large chunk of ground in a proven greenstone gold belt in Leonora, neighbouring multiple resources, mines and processing operations including Genesis Minerals’ (ASX:GMD) Gwalia mine.

There is already a 152,000oz gold deposit in place at Mt Stirling, a 222km2 landholding down the road from Vault Minerals’ (ASX:VAU) +6Moz King of the Hills gold mine, and more than 20 major gold prospects already defined that have never been drill tested.

Over at the newly acquired Kookynie East gold tenements, 80km south of Mt Stirling, a huge amount of historical workings and historical intercepts such as 6m at 166g/t gold and 9m at 4.3g/t have laid relatively dormant since 1992, before Genesis started drilling on the northern side of the Kookynie structure in 2015.

Data accessed so far has confirmed multiple historical mines on the 343km2 Kookynie landholding like the Orion and Saphhire deposits as well as the Cosmopolitan and Diamantina mines nearby, which, combined produced more than 380,000oz of gold.

This week, Asra dusted off a $3 million deal to sell its Tarmoola Pastoral Lease to Vault Minerals (ASX:VAU) after first signalling the transaction to the market in September of last year.

Asra intends to use the cash to accelerate exploration and growth at its Leonora gold projects.

“With the Leonora gold projects as our priority, we are well-positioned to accelerate exploration and growth initiatives that target high-grade, belt-scale discoveries,” CEO Paul Stephen said.

In an interview with Stockhead, Stephen – who has discovered some 2.8Moz of gold and delivered multiple projects across various jurisdictions – said there is a massive opportunity for Asra’s team to expand on what has already been done. He expects the next six to 12 months to be a busy period for the budding gold junior.

Foot on the right assets

“It’s all about focusing and delivering in the new year and the team has done the first part of the job really well – they’ve got themselves in a position where you can actually see the ability to add significant ounces to their resource,” he said.

“Nearly all their couple thousand ounces in resource can be expanded quite significantly, they’ve done a great job at cleaning things after a period of looking for lithium, rare earths and other shiny things and finally have their foot on the right assets where the only thing left to do is start drilling.

“For me, that is a really exciting time to come and join the company,” Stephen added.

“This is a real opportunity to focus the company as a pure gold play and Asra’s board is completely supportive of that approach.”

Stephen said the plan is to start drilling at Kookynie East first where strong gold grades of up to 47.95g/t were delineated during a recent diamond drilling campaign.

Drilling plans at Kookynie

Three diamond drill holes intersected the targeted mineralised structure and demonstrated the extension of mineralisation at both the Orion and Sapphire deposits, about 30m below previously drilled intercepts.

“That program was undertaken in the vicinity of previous exploration,” ASR executive chairman Paul Summers told Stockhead.

“But in our next campaign, which we will be kicking off in mid-January, we will be stepping out and if we can confirm what what’ve recently drilled, it will be very exciting for the company.”

The company hopes to replicate the success of its neighbour Genesis, which first acquired the Ulysses area at Kookynie in 2015 when its market cap was less than $10m and when with defined resources of only 138,000oz gold.

Today, the mining stock has grown to a market cap of around $2b with 2.02Moz gold resources.

Further east of Asra’s project and adjacent to the Kookynie township is the historical Cosmopolitan mine, which was mined from the late 1890s to early 1900s, producing over 300,000oz at over half an ounce

ASR non-executive director Matt Longworth said Cosmpolitan was considered one of the largest gold mines in WA at that time, demonstrating that the Kookynie gold field can hold significant mineralisation.

“Kookynie is one of the last areas in WA, particularly the Yilgarn, which has not received a large amount of exploration over the last 25 years, and we are testing our project areas to evaluate that style of mineralisation,” he said.

Drilling at Mt Stirling

Once drilling wraps up at Kookynie, the program will move onto Mt Stirling, a long-standing asset of the company.

Stephen said there was a strategic decision to follow where there was an existing resource with Asra gradually laying off a lot of its other ground over the past several years.

“The more we drilled, the more we found but exploration in the past wasn’t done as effectively as it could have been even though it is high yielding with many historical mines scattered around the place.”

A 2,400m aircore and 1,310m reverse circulation drilling program was recently caried out on soil anomalies and geophysical targets at the Dolorite East prospect, which confirmed the presence of gold mineralisation in the bedrock.

This year, Asra’s focus will be on testing the high-priority anomalies and following up the best intersections with RC holes with the aim of discovering new economic mineralisation.

This article was developed in collaboration with Asra Minerals, 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.