Pic: Andy Ryan (Stone) via Getty Images
Mining
Explorer Belararox Limited (ASX:BRX) is set to list today, after IPOing with $6m at $0.20, and non-executive chairman Neil Warburton is keen to get cracking at the company’s Belara Native Bee zinc copper project in NSW.
Warburton knows what he’s talking about when it comes to VMS deposits, he’s been on the board of IGO and other companies as Mark Creasy’s representative, and was the CEO of the largest mining contractor – Barminco – for about a decade.
Speaking with Stockhead, he said Belara has some solid exploration history and the company’s goal post-IPO is to bring up the resource to JORC 2012 compliant standards.
“The project is very much in the clean energy space with zinc and copper being on the critical list that’s outlined by the USA,” he said.
“And it’s not grassroots exploration, we know at Belara that these resources actually outcrop and historically have been mined for copper and zinc, going back around about 90 years ago.
“It’s been drilled by various parties, so it’s really an advanced exploration project and we expect to extend the current mineralisation.
“We expect to come up with a quite a sizable resource by the middle of the year.”
Kenex is the company’s geological consulting firm, and Michelle Stokes is a non-executive director in Belararox, which kind of makes sense since the firm farmed in to the Belara project.
“They done a lot of historical work on the project, so having that historical knowledge and having Michelle sitting on the board as a non-executive director is fantastic,” Warburton said.
“[Kenex] has got about 16-odd geologists so we don’t need to go and locate or hire a lot of exploration geologists that don’t know the region. These people are very experienced.”
Plus, MD Arvind Misra is a mining engineer by trade and has run public companies before.
“Having a mining engineer as your MD and having a very good group of geologists is a good mix,” Warburton said.
The company plans to report the upgraded resource mid-year, with the IPO funding around 5,600m of drilling which will kick off towards the end of February.
A geophysical survey is also planned, along with IP surveys which Warburton says will define the structures more definitively.
“We believe there’s a huge opportunity to extend the current resource area by doing the ground IP surveys,” he said.
“In addition to that, we’re going to do a very detailed topography survey of the region which will identify outcropping features that probably haven’t been picked up before.”
Belara is the lead project, with the goal to develop resources to meet the surge in demand from the technology, battery and renewable energy markets, but BRX also holds the Bullabulling Gold Project in Western Australia.
“It’s nearology project, it’s a long strike from the three million ounce Bullabulling gold project owned by Norton Gold Fields,” Warburton said.
“There’s been historically new interpretations based on seismic lines of this area and it looks like our tenements have very similar geological settings to the Bullabulling gold project.
“There’s been surface samples completed for gold, there’s been RAB drilling and there’s a large gold anomaly that we intend to test just north of the Bullabulling project.”
Warburton said the company’s got a good mix of people and a “very, very good project” in Belara.
“And the greenfields, exploration at Bullabulling adds value and also the excitement of finding hopefully more gold in Bullabulling,” he said.
Mining
Mining
Mining
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