M2M's Trevor Dixon has spent a lot of time in WA’s Goldfields and knows the region as well as anyone. Pic: Getty Images
Leonora old hand Trevor Dixon on why Golden Crown is WA’s next near-term production asset
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- Mt Malcolm Mines MD Trevor Dixon has a proven knack for discovering gold
- His latest venture with M2M follows many years of experience as founding vendor to multiple ASX-listed gold companies
- He’s keen to start drilling the Golden Crown prospect to prove just how much gold is lurking underground
Mt Malcolm Mines (ASX:M2M) managing director Trevor Dixon is no stranger to finding the yellow metal in WA’s mining heartland of the Goldfields having spent his early career as a gold prospector in the Leonora/Laverton district during the 1980s.
His knowledge of the area and mining expertise was further refined following several years treating ore at the Leonora State Battery, a government-owned ore-crushing facility designed to support prospectors, before taking on the role of founding vendor to multiple ASX-listed gold companies.
A great chunk of his time was later spent putting properties into prospective IPOs, which saw him work alongside Jubilee Mines, Terrain Minerals (ASX:TMX), Regal Resources and eventually Kin Mining, where he served as founding MD and chairman prior to its merger with PNX Metals to form Patronus Resources (ASX:PTN) in 2024.
As it turns out, he never really left the Leonora/Laverton district, with his work now focusing on proving up the resource base of the Golden Crown prospect within the Mt Malcolm project, which he believes has all the hallmarks of a high-grade gold development opportunity.
Historical gold-rich geological province
Dixon said it was a no brainer when he was asked if he would take back one of his properties, now known as the Mt Malcolm project, from Torren Resources in 2021 given its geological setting.
The project sits along the Keith Kilkenny Tectonic Zone (KKTZ) of the northeastern Yilgarn Craton, a remnant from Gondwana land back when it was connected to Antarctica.
The KKTZ is a significant regional structure, up to 5km wide, that is traceable over 300km from Kalgoorlie in the southeast right up to Wiluna in the north.
It hosts numerous gold and nickel mines dotted along its entire length including the historical Gwalia deposit now owned by Genesis Minerals (ASX:GMD) and Northern Star’s (ASX:NST) Carosue Dam operations.
Earlier-stage projects like Bulletin Resources’ (ASX:BNR) Lake Rebecca asset and Nexus Minerals’ (ASX:NXM) Wallbrook tenement package are also in the area, as are a number of processing facilities such as Vault Minerals (ASX:VAU) King of the Hills mill, where an $80m expansion to 6Mtpa is underway.
“It is a really significant geological event and probably one of the best places you want to be when looking for the likes of gold and precious metals,” Dixon said.
“These deposits are formed by deep-sourced fluids that bring the gold up through the fault systems over millions of years.
“The faulting structures that run through the rocks uplift the mineral content, which is commonly associated with gold deposits.”
But in the context of the Mt Malcolm project, Dixon said the company is still learning just how fertile the ground is.
Bulk sampling production
He told Stockhead the recently completed bulk sampling program was an important step for Mt Malcolm towards understanding the deposit.
“The Golden Crown deposit is a historical producer, so we knew it had history with high-grade production but one of the high-grade lodes, which we’ve called East Lode, was not well understood by the drilling we did.
“That led us to the decision of carrying out the bulk sampling program – we wanted to have a look at it in 3D because there’s nothing better than actually digging a hole to gain a better picture of where the hole sits,” he said.
“We thought it was dipping to the east and plunging to the northeast, which wasn’t the case at all. Once we excavated the bulk sampling pit down to 15 metres, we could see it was almost sub-vertical and wasn’t leaning anywhere in particular and plunged to the northwest.
“That bulk sampling work was so important and now means that we can drill East lode very confidently, knowing that we are going to build a substantial resource base.”
Drilling for resources
As well as providing the company with geotechnical parameters, the latest phase of the program produced 2972g (or 95.54 ounces) of gold doré from the processing of 200 wet metric tonnes (WMT) of high-grade material.
Metallurgical questions were also answered, with the company treating Mt Malcolm ore alongside the bulk sampling, which further de-risked the asset.
Overall, a cumulative recovery of 6780g (or 218oz) of gold doré was processed from 812 WMT of high-grade material, validating the effectiveness of wet gravity recovery for the coarse nature of Golden Crown mineralisation.
An exploration target for the stockpiles from the bulk sampling program is estimated at 2200 to 2500 WMT tonnes of material, with a grade ranging from 2.6g/t gold to 3g/t gold.
Doré sales to The Perth Mint generated $835,462 with gold purity ranging from 85.6% to 94.5% gold.
The company is now looking to use these insights gained from the bulk sampling to guide upcoming drilling programs focused on advancing resource estimations and setting forward the groundwork for an economic study.
Upcoming drilling programs
With multiple targets permitted and ready to go, Dixon said the company envisages a JORC compliant resource to be established by July or August this year.
“Those targets are important to us right now simply because of where the marketplace is, we’ve got gold at all-time highs and we’re very fortunate to have historic work that has created all these brownfields opportunities for us,” he said.
“And that was part of the reason why I put this ground package together is because I knew we didn’t have to start from scratch so to speak, we already had quite a number of promising prospects and that is why we broke our project up into bite size bits for our geologists – into seven particular prospecting areas.”
Golden Crown will see the first round of drilling, with a program designed to drill below the bulk sampling pit to establish extensions to mineralisation.
“We’ve also got our Emu Egg prospect up towards the north, which is drill ready with permitting in place, and then Sunday Picnic is another prospect further south down along the main line of strike, where we’ve just received our drilling permits,” he said.
“We’re very keen to get in amongst there, there’s a couple of historical open cuts where we will be drilling out extensions.
“The investor groups we’ve been speaking to are very eager to see additional production out of Golden Crown, most of them were really quite surprised at just how much gold was coming out of the prospect, we were getting tremendous recoveries and very high grades in comparison to what the big miners are mining at the moment.”
Dixon said the company is perfectly placed, surrounded by peers with hungry mills seeking satellite operations to help with their processing feed.
“That’s the beauty of where we are situated, we’re in an absolutely choice location – no matter what ounces we bring to the JORC resource, all eyes will turn on us at some point in time.”
At Stockhead, we tell it like it is. While Mt Malcolm Mines is a Stockhead advertiser, it did not sponsor this article.
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