RareX, Kincora accelerating Lachlan Fold copper-gold drilling

Special Report: RareX and its Canadian partner Kincora Copper are accelerating drilling at their Trundle copper-gold project to follow-up on recent encouraging exploration results.

Recent holes at the Mordialloc prospect have hinted at the presence of an economic copper-gold porphyry deposit within the known northern porphyry system at the Lachlan Fold Belt in New South Wales.

RareX (ASX:REE) and Kincora have also secured access to carry out high-priority follow-up drilling to expand high-grade, near-surface skarn gold-copper intervals and confirm an underlying gold-copper porphyry system at the southern Trundle Park prospect.

The first diamond hole at Trundle Park intersected multiple skarn zones including 51m at 1.17 grams per tonne (g/t) gold and 0.54 per cent copper from 39m with a high-grade zone of 2.2m at 4.32g/t gold and 2.43 per cent copper from 75.9m.

These results will be followed-up by a 17-hole program funded by Kincora’s recent oversubscribed $5.33m capital raising.

Technical committee chair John Holiday and Kincora senior VP of exploration Peter Leaman noted that drilling at Mordialloc continued to provide significant indications of being in close proximity to a high-grade part of the porphyry system.

They also added that with access re-established, an extensive drilling program would be carried out at Trundle Park to follow up the near-surface skarn system potential and to continue testing for a causative underlying mineralised porphyry copper-gold deposit.

Mordialloc copper-gold porphyry

Assays from the first hole at Mordialloc confirmed historical drilling results and returned metal grades comparable to the distal zones of the Northparkes and Cadia-Ridgeway porphyry deposits.

Kincora subsequently drilled a step-out hole about 150m to the south that returned multiple broad zones of anomalous copper, gold and molybdenum, including localised moderate to higher grade intervals.

This included a relatively shallow and previously unidentified skarn that included a 12m zone at 0.33g/t gold and 0.29 per cent copper from 138m.

Where it gets interesting is that while this hole returned anomalous and encouraging mineralisation and alteration, it was also interpreted to have been drilled to the east away from the targeted mineralised quartz monzonite porphyry complex.

Drilling is currently underway on the third hole, which has already intersected encouraging alteration and visual sulphides.

Initial and significantly expanded drilling program at Trundle Pic: Supplied

Upcoming drilling

Further drilling at Mordialloc will test the targeted finger porphyry setting and potential clustering of associated mineralised systems across a significant strike where anomalous surface and end-of-hole geochemistry, and geophysics are complementary.

This is the same method used in the discovery of Cadia-Ridgeway, the majority of the Northparkes deposits and also Alkane Resources’ (ASX:ALK) recent discovery at Boda.

At Trundle Park, high-priority drilling will initially test the northern and southern strike of alteration and mineralisation intersected in the first hole within the same block.

These holes will seek to test both the standalone near-surface gold-rich skarn and underlying finger porphyry potential at the Trundle Park target.

Free carried exploration

RareX farmed out a 65 per cent interest in the Trundle project to Kincora for an upfront payment and a free carry on exploration for its remaining 35 per cent interest in the project through to the delivery of a positive scoping study or preliminary economic assessment.

Trundle was previously held by Newcrest and HPX but remains largely untested with just 11 historic holes, or 0.5 per cent of holes drilled, going below 300m.

It is also the only brownfield porphyry project held by a listed junior in the Macquarie Arc.

This article was developed in collaboration with RareX, 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.