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.

Indiana Resources made headlines last year for winning a David and Goliath battle with the Tanzanian government, but it has allowed the company to re-establish itself as a well-funded, high-grade gold explorer.

In another life, Indiana was focused on the Ntaka Hill nickel project in Tanzania.

However, in January 2018, the Tanzanian government cancelled the licence covering the project, kicking off a six-year international legal fight.

Last year, it agreed to pay US$90 million to settle the claim.

Indiana had $48 million in cash as of mid-November and last month returned $32.6 million to shareholders by way of a special dividend.

The Bronwyn Barnes-chaired company entered 2025 with $23m in cash with the final instalment of US$30m ($48m) due to be paid by the Tanzanian government by the end of March, which it plans to return to shareholders in May.

It means that, unlike most juniors, the company can fund a large exploration effort without tapping shareholders.

“It changes the nature of the junior a bit, having distributions back to the shareholders,” recently appointed Indiana CEO Lindsay Owler told Stockhead.

“It’s something that I’ve never been involved in.”

 

South Australian gold

While Indiana has held its ground in SA for several years, the explorer’s cash balance will allow it to expand and accelerate future campaigns.

The company holds 5713km2 of ground in the Central Gawler Craton, a resource rich region in the centre of the copper, gold, rare earths and uranium endowed jurisdiction.

“There’s been a lot of bones to pick over, because there was a big wave of exploration in this area for gold in the ‘90s, in the Gawler Craton exploration boom,” Owler said.

“Then the activities before and after that have been patchier and we’ve got areas that could reasonably be described as super underexplored.”

Indiana has been focusing on the Minos prospect, which covers the Lake Labyrinth shear zone.

Just before Christmas, the company reported results from reverse circulation drilling, which included a peak assay of 1m at 57 grams per tonne gold from 210m.

The Main Zone of mineralisation at Minos has been intercepted over a strike length of 650m and to more than 200m below surface, which the company believes will be extended by further drilling.

Earlier this month, Indiana reported further results from Minos, including the newly defined Southwest Zone.

The new Southwest Zone returned 15m at 4.14g/t gold from 82m, including 1m at 11g/t and 2m at 11.8g/t, and 8m at 6.76g/t gold from 174m, including 1m at 45.8g/t gold.

Owler said the Southwest Zone would likely add tonnage to a future resource at Minos.

The company is completing some deep diamond holes and will also step out to the northwest.

“From my point of view, the existing planned drilling that I inherited has really come in, and the deposit’s continuing to give so that gives us somewhere to expand into, to enlarge the whole area, which is obviously the main purpose of this exploration work,” Owler said.

“In addition to doing that, we’re going to move towards resource definition.

“First, a sort of reinterpretation and development of a geological model for the deposit in March/April this year, and second is to get an independent maiden resource estimation out and to continue the drilling.”

Indiana also has a few earlier stage gold prospects – including Ariadne, Company Well and Partridge – that it’s hoping to follow up.

“All of these areas need drilling. Ariadne has had a bit but not enough. Company Well hasn’t been looked at since the ‘90s, and it was looked at by a big company that did very regional work … and almost no detailed work,” Owler said.

“So all of these things need to be followed up on because, really, it’s a model to sort of say, over a couple of kilometres, have we got a couple of pits here? That’s the model for the Lake Labyrinth shear zone that we’re working towards.”

 

Critical minerals sweetener

The northern part of the Minos prospect hosts rare earths mineralisation over a 10km strike length, which Indiana is conducting some metallurgical testing on.

Last week, Indiana reported that titanium source rocks had been identified at the Carne prospect, 20km east of Petratherm’s Rosewood titanium discovery.

Petratherm announced the discovery in September and its shares are up nearly 2000% over the past six months off the back of it.

Previous drilling at Carne returned 8m at 1.3% titanium from 12m, which Indiana plans to follow up.

“Initially we thought we were outside of the titanium geology, but then when we had a closer look, we realised that, no, we’re actually right in the thick of it,” Owler said.

“We’d like to get in there and supplement a fairly busy 2025 Gawler Craton exploration program with some titanium field work.”

Owler expects plenty of news flow from Indiana in 2025.

“We’re not going to have a period where we don’t have assays from drill holes in the lab,” he said.

“It is going to be a busy year for us.”

 

 

 

At Stockhead, we tell it like it is. While Indiana Resources is a Stockhead advertiser, it did not sponsor this article.

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