Kristie Batten: Like Novak Djokovic, Strickland serves up stunners in Serbia

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.

Strickland Metals (ASX:STK) already holds one of the largest undeveloped gold projects on the ASX – and it’s only getting bigger.

Last year, Strickland sold its Millrose project in Western Australia to Northern Star Resources (ASX:NST) for $61 million, which included $41 million in cash. It had been looking for another project ever since.

In April, it announced the $37 million, mostly scrip, acquisition of the large Rogozna project in Serbia from Perth-based private equity firm Ibaera Capital.

Geologist Paul L’Herpiniere joined Strickland as managing director from Ibaera as part of the transaction.

Rogozna already has an inferred resource of 2.96 million ounces of gold, 214,000 tonnes of copper and 364,000t of zinc, or 5.44Moz gold equivalent, with potential to grow as Strickland is already proving.

The bulk of the resource, or 4.6Moz gold equivalent, is hosted at the Shanac deposit.

Earlier this month, Strickland reported results from its first hole at Shanac, which returned a spectacular intercept of 89.7m at 4 grams per tonne from 244.5m, including 24.1m at 10.5g/t gold.

The hole was a pleasant surprise for Strickland as it marked the first time the high-grade, gold-only zone had been intersected at Shanac.

“We hadn’t hit that zone before, so while we thought it was a good spot, we didn’t know the grade was going to come back like that,” L’Herpiniere told Stockhead.

The hit was deemed the best of that week released by an ASX company by geology consultancy Opaxe.

Results building

Last week, the company reported results of 308.4m at 0.7g/t gold, 0.2% copper, 1% zinc, 0.5% lead and 6.6g/t silver, or 1.9g/t gold equivalent, from 299.4m in the second hole at Shanac.

The intersection included multiple high-grade zones like 90.9m at 1.4g/t gold, 0.3% copper, 0.3% zinc and 4.4g/t silver, or 2.3g/t AuEq, from 333.7m, including 26m at 2.1g/t gold, 0.4% copper, 0.1% zinc and 5g/t silver, or 3g/t AuEq.

Despite the strong results, the market response was fairly muted.

“If those were in WA, you’d expect to get a pretty massive response,” L’Herpiniere said.

L’Herpiniere said Strickland traditionally had around $100,000-200,000 worth of shares traded per day.

“When we put out that result, the first one, we had over a million dollars traded, and [on Thursday], I think it was about $600,000 or $700,000 of trade, so what it does do is increase liquidity,” he said.

“Strickland’s got 2.2 billion shares out there, and the bulk of that is retail, and so we’ve been pretty focused over the last two months trying to get some institutional investors buying in.

“There are institutional buyers coming in, at the moment, out of Europe and North America. I think it’s going to take a fair bit of time to get them in and get some of the looser money out.”

L’Herpiniere added that offshore investors were more comfortable with polymetallic deposits than Australian investors.

“Once we start putting some economics around it, then hopefully it’ll be understood,” he said.

“Adriatic (Metals) has been a pretty good success story. Adriatic’s (Vares) is a polymetallic deposit, but it took a long time for them as well to get really well understood.”

Advancing Rogozna

Ibaera previously spent about $500,000 on scoping study level metallurgical test work at Rogozna.

Three of the four deposits returned average total metal recovery of about 80%, while Medenovac returned 80% recovery on zinc and gold, but about 70% for copper.

“We’re fairly comfortable with the metallurgical side of things,” L’Herpiniere said.

Strickland has four rigs drilling at Rogozna, as well as three at its Yandal gold project in WA.

By the end of 2025, Strickland expects to have drilled 60,000m at Rogozna.

“Historically, the project had 100,000m, so this is the biggest exploration program the project’s ever seen, and this project’s been tucked away for about 20 years,” L’Herpiniere said.

“So it’s a pretty solid program, and from that we should be able to do about three resource updates, and with a bit of luck, be in a position by the end of next year to have a bit of visibility on what a mining operation looks like.”

Strategic asset

Serbia has been making mining headlines recently due to Rio Tinto’s (ASX:RIO) battle to develop its Jadar lithium project.

However, Rogozna sits in a historical mining area and is close to other major deposits owned by the likes of Zijin Mining and Dundee Precious Metals.

In February, Dundee’s nearby Coka Rakita project returned a spectacular hit of 81m at 50.57g/t gold and 0.15% copper from 122m, ranked the second-best drill hit to date in 2024 by Opaxe. That project was ninth on Opaxe’s best drill hits of 2023, giving a sense of the riches on offer in the region.

L’Herpiniere said the beauty of Rogozna was its scale.

“This will be the largest undeveloped gold project in Serbia and one of the largest in Europe,” he said.

“Because of that scale, it is strategic. The majors are watching. We’ve had several already come to site since the Strickland deal. We’ve already had two or three others reach out expressing some interest in it, so that scale is what is attractive.”

At Stockhead, we tell is like it is. While Strickland Metals was a Stockhead advertiser at the time of writing, it did not sponsor this article.