Carnaby Resources’ first VTEM survey at the Greater Duchess project in North-West Queensland has delivered game-changing results, according to managing director Rob Watkins.

A 194 line km aerial VTEM (Versatile Time Domain Electromagnetic) survey has been completed over the Mount Hope and Nil Desperandum regions within that project.

In an update to the ASX, Carnaby said it had pointed to multiple strong late channel bedrock conductors at undrilled locations.

“The numerous new undrilled strong late time conductors identified are all exceptional walk-up drill targets and provide an immediate focus for ongoing exploration drilling aimed at increasing the open pit mineral resources at the Greater Duchess project,” Mr Watkins said.

He said the 4km-plus Mohawk corridor was emerging as an exceptional target zone, where only a handful of holes had been drilled.

Assay results received to date include 21m at 2.0 per cent copper and 0.6g/t gold.

Related: First Mohawk discovery holes deliver for Carnaby

The VTEM survey was completed by UTS Geophysics and supervised by Southern Geoscience.

Carnaby said detailed processing of the data was underway and it was expected to take about one month to receive the final data and images.

“We look forward to receiving the processed VTEM data for all to see the scale and significance of the conductors that have been identified,” Mr Watkins said.

Carnaby has completed a scoping study for the Greater Duchess project, 70km south-east of Mount Isa.

The study centred on open pit and underground mining of three deposits – Nil Desperandum, Lady Fanny and Mount Hope.

It set out a mine life of nine to 12 years and a run-of-mine production target of 823,000 to 862,000 tonnes depending on whether the project uses toll treatment or its own plant.

The cost of bringing the operation online is estimated at $35 million if Carnaby uses a third party processing route rather than setting up its own processing infrastructure.

The explorer is in discussions with Glencore about the potential use of its Mount Isa copper mill and concentrator.

The estimated capex to bring Greater Duchess online rises to $174 million if Carnaby is to build a standalone processing plant.

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