Lefroy adding copper, nickel drilling to its gold-focused exploration

Special Report: With a year of solid gold exploration nearly completed, Lefroy is looking to keep its momentum going while adding some copper and nickel targets into the mix.

While gold has been a great driver of value this year, both copper and nickel have enormous growth potential ahead as essential metals for both electric vehicles and lithium-ion batteries.

Consultancy Wood Mackenzie has predicted that by 2040, passenger EVs will consume more than 3.7 million tonnes of copper per annum and this does not include the additional requirements for charging stations and other supporting electrical grid infrastructure.

Meanwhile, nickel is benefitting from its stronger than expected demand from China, as well as growing use in lithium ion batteries that are expected to hold significantly more energy than regular lithium ion batteries.

This makes it interesting times for Lefroy Exploration (ASX:LEX), which has plans to carry out reverse circulation (RC) and diamond drilling at the Burns copper-gold project along with early stage drilling designed to fill its prospect pipeline at the Carnilya South and Lake Johnston nickel targets.

However, the company has not left gold behind.

Aircore drilling is currently underway along banded iron formation (BIF) trends near its Lucky Strike project to evaluate multiple targets that could deliver regolith gold anomalies for RC and diamond drilling to build on the Lucky Strike resource.

Lefroy is also advancing the Hang Glider Hill exploration hub by evaluating five strong surface auger anomalies to deliver new RC targets.

Burns copper-gold project

The company secured the 20sqkm tenement over the Burns prospect in September.

It was first discovered in 2011 and subsequent drilling intersected broad zones of gold and copper mineralisation.

Notable intersections included 32m at 1.7 grams per tonne (g/t) gold and 0.6 per cent copper from 76m, 50m at 0.9g/t gold and 0.5 per cent copper from 24m and 12m at 1.5g/t gold and 0.5 per cent copper from 27m.

Despite this, the intrusion has only been partially explored by shallow aircore drilling and is considered a priority exploration target for an intrusion related copper gold system.

Lefroy completed a heritage survey in November and has scheduled RC and diamond drilling to start in early January 2021

Lake Johnston nickel project

Lake Johnston is a large tenement holding located about 5km north of Poseidon Nickel’s (ASX:POS) Emily Anne/Maggie Hayes nickel mine.

In January 2019, initial interpretation of geophysical data covering the northern portion of the Lake Johnston greenstone belt, which hosts the Emily Ann and Maggie Hayes deposits, had outlined a large gravity anomaly at Mt Day.

This is interpreted to be a large, buried mafic intrusion.

Additionally, the Bullseye prospect is interpreted to represent a mafic intrusion to be drill tested in December 2020.

Good as gold

Lefroy’s current 15,000m aircore drilling is evaluating seven prioritised targets along the parallel Havelock and Erinmore BIF trends that are on strike from the 79,600oz Lucky Strike gold resource.

These target areas were developed from interpretation of aeromagnetic data that highlight discontinuities, flexures and/or breaks in the BIF that may host a style of mineralisation similar to that at Lucky Strike.

Over at Hang Glider Hill, an early stage diamond drilling program intersected visible gold within the first of three holes.

This trend was identified in 2018 and 2019 from auger sampling and the discovery of gold nuggets.

At Western Lefroy, joint venture partner Gold Fields is evaluating multiple large geochemical targets through foundation diamond and aircore drilling on Lake Lefroy.

The South African company is earning up to a 70 per cent interest by spending up to $25m on exploration within six years from commencement of the agreement.

This article was developed in collaboration with Lefroy Exploration, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.