Drilling preparations are underway at TG1’s gold prospect in the WA’s tier-one Yilgarn Caton.

WA-based copper and gold play TechGen Metals (ASX:TG1) made its ASX debut yesterday, after raising $6m from investors at 20c per share.

The company joined the ASX boards with exploration efforts at its 100% owned projects already under way.

And speaking with Stockhead the new listing, managing director Ashley Hood said that gives TG1 the opportunity to hit the ground running as a listed company.

Across TechGen’s three project jurisdictions, the first cab off the rank is situated in WA’s world-renowned Yilgarn Craton where the primary target is gold.

The second project area – mainly focused on copper – is in the mineral-rich Ashburton Basin, with a third copper-gold play in the highly prospective Patterson Orogeon.

 

Strong demand

Discussing the IPO raise, Hood said the round was well supported by sophisticated investors with  bids scaled back after the offer was heavily oversubscribed.

“Many firms wanted large stakes and there was a lot of positive feedback about the company,” he said.

Most of that had to do with the quality of TG1’s asset base, with serious projects underway in tier-one mining jurisdictions.

“The company has projects in three different geographies. So it does offer investors diversity which many companies don’t have, and there was quite a lot of positive feedback about that,” Hood said.

TG1 non-executive chair Maja McGuire said the quality of the firm’s management team also stood out at the pre-IPO stage.

“In terms of the management structure, both Ash and (technical director Andrew Jones) are the project vendors,” she told Stockhead.

“Upon listing they will be the two largest shareholders in the company. So you don’t get a lot of instances where the people driving the project are also the primary vendors, with their interests aligned to deliver that maximum value to all shareholders.”

 

Out of the gates

For Hood, another key differentiating factor for TG1 is that the company has done a significant amount of exploration work prior to listing.

In that context, the public listing gives it the capital base to advance drilling and exploration, as opposed to a business that raises IPO funds before pegging prospective areas.

“For our Yilgarn project, our technical and executive director Andrew Jones is on the drilling rig as we speak,” Hood said.

The area was last drilled about 15-20 years ago, Hood said, back when gold prices were a lot lower than they are now.

In addition, TG1 is deploying its drill program with a much deeper understanding of the local geology compared to previous drilling efforts, while also benefitting from advances in mapping technology.

“We’ve identified a new gold mineralised green-stone belt 90km north west of Leonora that we identified about 18 months ago, and we’ve worked it up to a stage which is now drill ready. An RC rig will be mobilising to the Ida Valley Yilgarn Craton project in approximately three weeks’ time for the projects inaugural drilling campaign,” Hood said.

And that advanced timeline means ASX investors will have plenty of news flow to look forward to over the coming weeks and months.

Among the market updates, Hood said Jones and the on-site team at El Donna Yilgarn gold project will be delivering samples to the laboratory as soon as practical, while the company is also running an helli-borne VTEM Max program at its highly prospective Ashburton copper projects.

“Our technical team completed a rock-chipping geochemistry surveys (at Ashburton) last year, and the team came across some highly mineralised copper, gold and silver gossan at surface which had never been explored,” Hood said.

“So we like the geological and geochemical nature of that prospect and the fact there were four or five different copper species.”

All up, TG1 is operating seven projects across three jurisdictions all in WA, with a total of 12 exploration licences.

And Hood said that as major shareholders, both he and Jones are focused on development across the company’s spectacular copper and gold exploration portfolio.

“We’re not here for an annual fee. We’re driven to make an exploration discovery,” he said.

“And with projects being as advanced as they are, we don’t need to spend a heck of a lot to test these targets.

“A lot of juniors listing are exhausting resources looking to generate targets. We are coming to the market with advanced projects already underway.”

This article was developed in collaboration with TechGen Metals, 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.