This article is a sponsored feature from Mining.com.au partner Astute Metals. It is not financial advice. Talk to a registered financial expert before making investment decisions.
Astute Metals (ASX:ASE) is gearing up to tackle exploration on two fronts in one of the top mining jurisdictions in the world.
Nevada again ranked second in terms of investment attractiveness in the Fraser Institute’s Annual Survey of Mining Companies 2024.
The pro-mining state is the largest gold producing region in the US with 127 active gold mines, 104 active silver mines and eight active copper mines, as well as the lithium capital of North America and home to Tesla’s high-volume gigafactory, which is undergoing an expansion.
CEO Matt Healy says Nevada is the fifth largest gold producer in the world despite only being a small state at around one and a half times the size of Victoria.
Over the next few weeks, Astute will be back on the ground drill testing some high-grade gold-silver targets at its Needles Project before shifting the rig to the Red Mountain Lithium Project to round out its maiden resource drilling campaign.
Healy tells Mining.com.au Astute has “quite an ambitious plan for the rest of the year”.
“Basically, at Needles we’ve got an underexplored epithermal gold project,” he explains.
“There’s some very high-grade samples at surface. There’s historical workings and we’re looking to go and test a number of those targets.”
Needles was a legacy asset in Astute’s portfolio that had been parked under the previous board and management after exploration in 2021 did not return the results they were looking for.
Needles Project revisited with fresh strategy
Healy, who took the helm of the company in August 2024, decided to undertake a review of the project, particularly given the high gold and silver prices.
That review applied a new lens to more than 20 years of historical exploration data and has resulted in the identification of a number of walk-up drill targets.
“We identified some really nice targets. There’s six walk-up drill targets,” Healy says
There are also eight historical mines dating as far back as the 1800s, with the largest extending down to 110m depth.
“All would have been dug by hand,” Healy notes. “There are four levels in this mine. It’s called Arrowhead. They did not do that sort of thing just for fun, they did it for really high-grade ore.”
Rock chip results taken from waste piles near the mine have yielded grades of up to 1,115 grams per tonne silver and 2.57g/t gold.
Drilling along strike from the Arrowhead Mine returned intercepts including 3.42m @ 905g/t silver and 2.92g/t gold.
Rock chips taken from the Tomahawk Mine show a 200m-long trend with assays of up to 406g/t silver and 5.54g/t gold, while rock chip samples from the Eastern shaft returned grades of up to 622g/t silver and 33g/t gold.
Imaging using the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer shows a large 3km by 2km epithermal system.
Drilling deeper into Nevada’s epithermal systems
Past drilling is mostly shallow, and alteration mineralogy and pathfinder geochemistry suggests that this drilling is high up in the ‘cap’ of the epithermal system, indicating the most prospective exploration space is yet to be tested.
AngloGold Ashanti’s 16-million-ounce Silicon-Merlin gold discovery, uncovered in 2018, also features this upper cap alteration zonation, with drilling undertaken beneath historical drill holes highlighting the potential for major epithermal gold discoveries in Nevada.
“They targeted some faults at depth below all of the historical drilling and on the second hole they made the discovery,” Healy notes.
Astute’s Needles Project also features the same host rocks as the 20-million-ounce Round Mountain Mine, located 100km to the north.
“We know there’s a system there. We know it’s fertile for gold and silver. The question is where to go next to make the discovery,” Healy explains.
Once drilling is completed at the Needles Project, the rig will then be mobilised to Red Mountain to undertake resource drilling.
Healy says Red Mountain is shaping up to be one of the highest grade lithium clay projects in the US.
“We know there’s a system there. We know it’s fertile for gold and silver. The question is where to go next to make the discovery”
Astute has so far drilled 19 holes, with 18 of those intersecting lithium grading at over 1,000 parts per million (ppm) and mineralisation spanning a 5.6km strike.
The highest grade large lithium clay mineral resource in the US sits around 2,200ppm, and Red Mountain has returned intersection grades of as high as 3,200ppm.
Resource drilling to define scale
A further 16 holes and 3,680m are expected to be drilled and incorporated into a resource estimation.
Astute previously released an exploration target for Red Mountain of 1.1 to 1.5 billion tonnes @ 785 to 1,328ppm for 4.7 million to 10.7 million tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent.
Drilling will focus on the ‘high-grade’ parts of that exploration target in the north and middle of Target Area A, which Healy says leaves “plenty of upside for the future”.
Meanwhile, metallurgical testwork completed by Astute has shown extraction rates of up to 98% using conventional leaching and the potential to increase the grade by over 36% through beneficiation.
The company is planning to undertake further metallurgical testwork at Red Mountain.
“We’ve got a substantial lithium discovery here,” Healy says.
“It’s got huge scale and almost every hole that we’ve drilled into this thing is intersecting high-grade lithium. We’ve got a large resource coming out by the end of the year and the potential to make a high-grade gold and silver discovery at Needles.
“That’s our plan for the rest of the year. Like I said, it’s ambitious, but I think we can get it done.”
Astute expects to release results from nearly 30 drillholes and the results of the metallurgical testwork before the year comes to a close.
Write to Angela East at Mining.com.au
Images: Astute Metals & Mining.com.au
