Special Report: PNG explorer Gold Mountain Limited is assembling a heavyweight team of advisors as it ramps up its search for the next major copper-gold porphyry system along the Papuan Mobile Belt.

Gold Mountain (ASX: GMN), which is led by former BHP senior executive Tim Cameron as CEO, announced the appointment of porphyry expert Phil Jones as an exploration consultant this week shortly after naming former Rio Tinto senior executive Matt Liddy as an advisor to the company.

The appointments come as Gold Mountain awaits assay results from three diamond holes drilled at the Monoyal prospect, where the company is focusing its initial exploration within its 2,500km2 Wabag project in PNG.

Among his first tasks, Jones, who has been consultant exploration geologist – project evaluations at established copper miner Sandfire Resources (ASX: SFR) for the past seven years and has more than 35 years’ experience in the industry, will review the exploration conducted at Monoyal to date and advise on future drill hole planning.

“We are clearly onto something potentially significant at Monoyal,” Cameron said. “With the wealth of data we have accumulated over the past two years, it’s now appropriate to bring in someone of Phil’s calibre to assist in locating the core of this porphyry system.”

Perhaps the best example of Jones’ experience with porphyry systems is his involvement with the re-evaluation of the E48 deposit, which is the main ore body at the Northparkes copper-gold mine in central New South Wales.

This re-evaluation led to a doubling in size of the deposit through a deep drilling program and a better understanding of the geological setting in general.

Liddy joins Gold Mountain as an advisor with his expertise primarily in corporate strategy and project development. He was most recently vice president business development in the aluminium product group with Rio Tinto.

A long-time supporter of Gold Mountain who first become a shareholder in 2018, Liddy invested a further substantial sum in the company through the placement completed earlier this month, encouraged as he was by recent exploration results.

All five diamond holes drilled by Gold Mountain at Monoyal since September last year have intersected wide zones of anomalous copper and molybdenum mineralisation, with the best intercepts from the two holes that have been assayed returning 101m at 0.14% copper and 76ppm molybdenum from 398m and 124m at 0.12% copper and 105ppm molybdenum from 125m.

Visual analysis of the three holes mostly recently drilled suggests they could contain higher levels of copper and/or gold mineralisation intersected to date. Assays for these holes are expected in late June (MCD007) and mid-July (MCD005 and MCD006).

 

This story was developed in collaboration with Gold Mountain, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.
This story does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.