IPO Watch: East Lachlan Fold explorer Kaiser Reef gains 30pc on ASX debut

The excitement surrounding the East Lachlan Fold region in New South Wales has proven to be timely for the ASX’s newest explorer, which debuted with a 30 per cent gain on Friday.

Kaiser Reef’s (ASX:KAU) Stuart Town gold project is located along strike and in between Newcrest Mining’s (ASX:NCM) giant Cadia copper-gold mine and Alkane Resources’ (ASX:ALK) Boda porphyry copper-gold discovery.

The company has raised $4.5m through a heavily subscribed IPO of 22.5 million shares priced at 20c per share to fund exploration at the project.

Kaiser ended its first session still up 25 per cent following the trade of 2.5 million shares worth a bit under $600,000.

Executive director Jonathan Downes told Stockhead earlier this month that Kaiser’s Stuart Town project hosted over 80 historic gold mines and significant gold production that had been modelled to be minor leaking from an underlying basement.

These mines produced more than 170,000 ounces of gold.

The company will target shallow modelled intrusions speculated but untested by earlier explorers such as MIM.

Soil sampling previously returned large-scale gold anomalism and encouraging volcanic rocks hosting gold rich veins.

This will test for the source of the historical mines which Downes said remained a mystery.

The Lachlan Fold Belt has received considerable interest since Alkane discovered thick porphyry copper-gold at Boda with intercepts such as 689m grading 0.46 grams per tonne (g/t) gold and 0.19 per cent copper from a depth of 402m.

And then there is Newcrest’s production of nearly 913,000oz of gold and 91,000 tonnes of copper from Cadia at a tiny all-in sustaining cost of just $132/oz in the 2019 financial year.