Aeris Resources is kicking off mining studies for an underground operation at Barbara after a successful drilling campaign to update the resource estimate at the North-West Queensland copper-gold site.

The deposit sits on an existing mining lease, significantly reducing the potential timeline to production.

Aeris took ownership of the Barbara site in its $234 million takeover of Round Oak Minerals last year, which also brought the operating Mount Colin mine in North-West Queensland into its portfolio.

It announced an updated mineral resource estimate today of 2.2 million tonnes at 2.0 per cent copper and 0.2g/t gold for a total of about 45,000 tonnes of copper metal and 12,000 ounces of gold metal.

Related: Aeris outlines Barbara drilling campaign

Aeris Resources executive chairman, Andre Labuschagne hailed the recent in-fill drilling campaign at Barbara as a great success.

“Not only have the ore tonnes and contained copper and gold increased, but importantly, the majority of the resource (89 per cent) is now classified as indicated,” he said.

“Barbara is on a current mining lease and the metallurgy is well understood from when the deposit was previously mined as an open-pit.

“We will now commence mining studies to investigate potential for an underground mining operation as well as update necessary environmental permitting.”

Mr Labuschagne said also the company believed there was significant potential to increase the size of the Barbara mineral resource with further drilling down-plunge.

The site hosted an open-pit copper mine from March 2019 to December 2020, with sulphide ore crushed and trucked to Mount Isa for processing.