‘Right ground, right team’ set Austral exploration scene

Austral Resources has launched its $7 million-plus 2023 exploration campaign with plans to boost its copper inventory and unlock new opportunities across its North-West Queensland tenements. Priorities include the Lady Colleen deposit, with an established total mineral resource of 3.15 million tonnes at 1.73 per cent copper. Austral project and prospect locations western tenement area. The board believes that the development of Lady Colleen will be transformational, offering Austral Resources the potential to increase annual production combined with the existing production from Anthill to over 25,000 tonnes per annum in copper cathode and concentrate. The 2023 drilling campaign was delayed due to the extreme wet weather across the region last month. Related: Copper revenue rolls in as Austral hits its stride In the June quarter the company's exploration program will focus on oxide extensions at the old Lady Annie pit and Anthill mine, as well as continuing drilling at sites including Lady Colleen and Flying Horse. Austral’s exploration manager Ben Coutts said the exploration team had assembled a program that was balanced between the two priorities of increasing economic mineral inventory on Austral ML’s and evaluating regional prospects. "Integrated into the 2023 exploration program is a thorough evaluation of Austral’s extensive legacy dataset, and the geology knowledge gained by the exploration team over 2022," he said. "The resource development processes applied to Lady Colleen over 2022 with such success will be repeated over other oxide and sulphide development options on Austral MLs in 2023. "Austral will continue to engage proactively with our peers evaluating JV opportunities to both monetise Austral tenure, and also gain access to copper prospects currently held by others. "I am confident that we have the right ground, the right team and the right focus for discovery in 2023, and look forward to sharing results with the market as our program is executed." The 2023 exploration program is designed to potentially; • Increase inventory more than 40kt through copper oxides and or sulphides discovery, with a priority focus on existing MLs within 50 km of the Mount Kelly SX-EW plant. • Unlock copper oxide potential with the Drifter anomaly, boasting 16.05 per cent copper from surface rock chip samples. Highly prospective targets at Anthill and within the Glencore JV. • Unleash copper sulphide opportunities with Lady Colleen’s high-grade zone, Enterprise reporting a maiden mineral resource, and targets like Flying Horse, Lady Annie, Investigator, and Neptune.

‘Right ground, right team’ set Austral exploration scene

Industry Queensland

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