Metal Hawk launches into multi-faceted WA exploration

Having recently expanded the gold zone at the Little Lake prospect and with more aircore results on the way, the future looks bright for Metal Hawk.

The company, which is focused on exploration projects in the world-class Eastern Goldfields and Albany-Fraser Range districts of Western Australia, continues to check all boxes when it comes to a junior exploration play.

Metal Hawk (ASX:MHK) is pursuing aggressive exploration programs in world class regions, while also benefiting from joint venture arrangements with established partners in Western Areas (ASX:WSA) and Chalice Mining (ASX:CHN).

There’s little more an investor could ask for.

“What we offer from the investment perspective is leverage to exploration success,” managing director Will Belbin told Stockhead.

“We’re looking for new discoveries, and we believe that’s where you’re going to get the most leverage for your shareholders and your company.

“Most of the work we’re doing is fairly low cost – we’re not drilling deep holes, we’re looking for near-surface mineralisation which gives us good bang for our exploration dollar.”

Near-surface mineralisation is exactly what’s exciting for Metal Hawk about Little Lake, part of the broader Kanowna East project where it reported a series of exciting hits from aircore in April and recently completed a second phase of the drilling to further test prospectivity.

Stage 1 drilling returned some great assays from the fringes of Little Lake, with highlights including:

5m at 4.76 grams per tonne gold from 65m;
4m at 7.11 g/t gold from 55m;
6m at 3.37g/t gold from 24m, and;
5m at 2.24g/t gold from 65m to end of hole.

Stage 2 drilling has also been completed, designed to test the extensive structural zone north of Little Lake. Assays for this stage are pending.

Metal Hawk — Lake AC drilling at Kanowna East. Pic: Supplied.

“At Little Lake, we’ve been following up on a historical, near end-of-hole result which was drilled by Lion Ore in 2005,” Belbin said.

“They were looking for nickel, they hit 18m at 1.2 grams per tonne gold at the end of an aircore hole which was never followed up – there’s been no drilling along strike for hundreds of metres.

“That was the main reason we wanted to hold onto the gold rights on that project. We could see the potential and it’s developing quite well.”

Pending the results to come of the recent aircore, Belbin is hopeful of getting into some deeper RC in the second part of the year at Little Lake.

Exploration in partnership

As alluded to above, Metal Hawk holds all gold rights on Kanowna East – 8km northeast of Northern Star’s (ASX:NST) +5Moz Kanowna Belle gold mine – with Western Areas earning up to a 75% interest in all non-gold minerals on the project under a JV partnership.

The JV arrangement also covers the nearby Emu Lake project, considered prospective for gold and nickel sulphide mineralisation, where Western Areas is currently carrying out a heritage survey and has ground EM and aircore planned for the coming months.

Metal Hawk also has exploration plans in place for Emu Lake over the coming months, and Belbin said the arrangement would allow Metal Hawk to use the Western Areas aircore rig for its own gold purposes over the coming months.

One area of nickel interest where Metal Hawk takes charge is on the 100%-owned Blair North and Clinker Hill projects near Kalgoorlie, where moving loop electromagnetic surveys were completed last quarter as part of a systematic nickel sulphide exploration program.

Belbin said the projects were an interesting proposition for the company in complement to its gold interests.

“There’s some very exciting geochemical targets on those projects, the recent ground EM had some very interesting things come of it,” he said.

“There’s been very little work done on the nickel side of things considering the proximity to a very high grade nickel sulphide deposit in the Blair nickel mine.

“We’ve got some interesting targets there – it’s a good little project for us.”

Fraser Range calls

In the Albany-Fraser Orogen, Metal Hawk is partnered with Chalice Mining on the exciting Viking gold project.

Under the agreement, Chalice may earn up to a 70% interest in the project with exploration spend of $2.75 million over four and a half years.

Chalice is in the process of submitting permits with a view to begin exploration drilling over the next few months – a step Belbin labelled exciting.

“Viking is a very high-grade gold project which was discovered by AngloGold only about 10 years ago when they were looking for another Tropicana,” he said.

“They came up with some high-grade, shallow gold at the Beaker prospect, which is only about 30km from Norseman.

“The prospect is advanced in the fact they’re ready for RC drilling – we can go out there and hit it with some high-impact follow-up work, and that’s what Chalice is going to do.”

Of particular interest in early drilling is the Beaker 2 prospect, where historical drilling hit some serious intersections.

Metal Hawk also holds the Fraser South and Norseman East early-stage exploration projects in the region, with the former targeting nickel-copper massive sulphides under cover under the Western Areas JV agreement and the latter prospective for gold.

With a multi-project exploration program, active JV partners and in a strong cash position, Metal Hawk looks set for plenty of newsflow over the coming months.

This article was developed in collaboration with Metal Hawk, 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.