Kristie Batten: Javelin looks to emulate Spartan's golden success

One of Australia’s top mining journalists, Kristie Batten writes for Stockhead every week in her regular column placing a watchful eye on the movers and shakers of the small cap resources scene.

They say the best place to look for gold is next to a mine so that’s exactly the strategy of microcap explorer Javelin Minerals (ASX:JAV) .

With a market capitalisation of less than A$20 million, gold newcomer Javelin is highly leveraged to exploration success.

Executive chairman Brett Mitchell told the Resources Rising Stars Summer Series last week that 2024 had been transformational for the company after spending the past several years as a battery metals explorer.

“We didn’t have any money in the bank at the start of the year and we needed to go through a full corporate and project restructuring of the company,” he said.

“I’d been a shareholder for about four years and was asked by the other major shareholders to join the board and lead that review and restructure of the company and its assets.

“Over the course of the year, we were able to relaunch the company, initially with the Coogee gold project, which is located just 50 kilometres outside of Kalgoorlie, and then, more recently, we bought the Eureka gold project, which is also located 50km to the north of Kal.

“So we’re closing the year as a very focused and dedicated brownfields gold exploration and development company with two assets either side of Kalgoorlie.”

Drilling underway at Coogee

Coogee sits on the northeastern shore of Lake Lefroy, adjacent to Gold Fields’ world-class St Ives complex, which last year produced 372,000 ounces of gold at all-in costs of A$1958 an ounce.

Javelin has held the project since 2020 but had been more focused on lithium.

Mid-tier gold producer Ramelius Resources produced 20,400oz at 4.7 grams per tonne gold via a 70m-deep open pit at Coogee in 2013 but it has been largely untouched since then.

Once Javelin decided to refocus on gold, a review of historical data allowed it to come out with an updated JORC resource of 3.65 million tonnes at 1.08 g/t gold for 126,685oz of contained gold and 1.01Mt at 0.41% copper for 4133t of contained copper.

Javelin kicked off its first drilling campaign at Coogee two weeks ago and is hoping to wrap up the 3000m program this week before the drillers wind down for Christmas.

“Interestingly, this has had no exploration done on it for 4-5 years, and now we’re in a record gold price environment, it makes the totally different proposition,” Mitchell said.

Drilling will focus on extensions below the pit and the expansion of mineralisation to the north and northwest.

A review of historical data identified the large Bulls-Eye magnetic anomaly, 300m north of the Coogee pit, which will also be tested.

The first results are expected in late December/early January.

A second phase of drilling will begin next month.

Second project secured

In late October, Javelin announced the acquisition of the Eureka gold project from Delta Lithium.

Mitchell was familiar with the project, having been a director of Delta’s predecessor company Red Dirt Metals, and thought it would be a good fit for Javelin.

Javelin agreed to pay $1.5 million in cash and issue 1.5 million shares upfront, while another $1 million of shares will be due if Javelin restarts mining or delineates a gold resource of at least 200,000oz.

As part of the deal, Javelin raised $3 million to cover the cash component and exploration work.
Late last month, Javelin shareholders approved the deal.

The project has previously produced around 32,000oz of gold and has a current resource of 112,000oz at 1.42g/t gold.

There’s been no exploration at Eureka since 2021 but previous results included 4m at 134.5g/t gold, 3m at 48.75g/t gold and 4m at 32.08g/t gold.

The top priority for Javelin will be following up those results, as well as two lodes to the north of the pit.
“There’s also more than 4km of strike potential to the south, which hasn’t been able to be drill tested, and which we look to do so,” Mitchell said.

Javelin is aiming to start drilling in late January or early February.

Early production potential

Importantly for Javelin, Coogee and Eureka both sit on granted mining leases.

“To actually have projects on mining leases in Australia now is just absolutely critical in terms of that path to production and acceleration in terms of cost and time, as well as permitting risks,” Mitchell said.

Coogee ore was previously processed at the Burbanks mill but there are plenty of other gold mills in the area and Javelin is open to ore sales or toll treatment to generate early cashflow.

Eureka also has near-term production potential.

“We’re 20km north of the Paddington mill, which is which is still accepting feed from third-party sources, and that’s where we would be able to take this project into production,” Mitchell said.

“In terms of ability to get this project into production and generate revenue, we’ve got all the core ingredients here.”

Javelin’s share price has already gone up three times since revamping its strategy, albeit off a low base.

“And that’s before we’ve even put a drill hole in the ground, so it gives credence the strategy and what we’re focused on doing,” Mitchell said.

Mitchell is inspired by the success of high-grade gold explorer Spartan Resources (ASX:SPR), which went from 10c last year to as high as $1.67 recently.

“We’re only capped at $20 million so we therefore have some serious leverage to success on that drill bit,” he said.

“We’ll follow the Spartan lead and drill aggressively for the next 12 months and lots of news flow to come out of that.”

At Stockhead we tell it like it is. While Javelin Minerals and Spartan Resources are Stockhead advertisers at the time of writing, they did not sponsor this article.