With final assays to be returned from the Sybil Project early next week, Sunshine Metals (ASX:SHN) is shifting its exploration focus to its Liontown Project in Queensland before jumping into drilling.
Speaking to Mining.com.au on the sidelines of the Noosa Mining Investor Conference, Managing Director Damien Keys says Sunshine will bring the Liontown to a measured resource status ahead of a mining study to be delivered in January.
“While we collect those early stage data sets remotely, so helimag (aeromagnetic survey flown by a helicopter) and stuff up at Sybil, we’ll move back and do the pit break control drilling,” Keys tells this news service.
“That’ll give us absolute confidence to push forward with the mining.”
Sunshine, which has a market capitalisation of $59.02 million, expects to return a resource update for Liontown in the next couple of weeks.
Keys explains that the company has been able to uncover a lot about the Sybil Project, since acquiring it in June 2025. Sunshine’s initial goal for the asset was to get on the ground and assess the size of the system.
“We’re certainly more bullish about the project than we were when we picked it up,” Keys adds.
“We’ve hit gold in all 10 holes so far. We’ve got some amazing information.”
“The field looks like it could be really well in doubt – it shows amazing similarities to the Pajino, still in terms of tenor and thickness, so we’re really excited.”
Located in North Queensland, the Pajingo Gold Operation has produced over 3.4 million ounces since 1996.
The asset is currently held by Shandong Yulong Gold’s wholly owned subsidiary Yuxin Holdings and is predicted to produce more than 80,000 ounces of gold each year.
Following early stage data collection in the wet season, Sunshine intends to move back into drilling at Sybil as soon as weather permits, estimated in March.
Sunshine’s Sybil Project within the greater Ravenswood Consolidated Project in north Queensland continues returning “shallow, high-grade” gold intercepts from a recent diamond drilling campaign, as reported by Mining.com.au.
The company conducted 1,177.4m of drilling across 14 holes between August-October 2025, targeting low-sulphidation epithermal gold mineralisation at the A and Main Veins.
Intercepts include 7m @ 3.93 grams per tonne gold from 65m, including 3m @ 7.65g/t gold from 69m; 4.8m @ 1.48g/t gold from 59.2m; and 2.8m @ 15.15g/t gold from 37m.
Global gold demand increased 10% year-on-year in the June quarter to 1,079 tonnes, after two quarters of 15% growth.
According to the Department of Industry, Science and Resources (DISR) September 2025 Resources and Energy Quarterly, this rise in demand was driven by higher investment in bar and coins (up 78% year-on-year to the June quarter to 447 tonnes), with jewellery, industrial and central bank demand all dropping.
“The easing in gold demand growth from the very high levels in the previous two quarters is due to persistent high prices weighing on jewellery and central bank demand,” DISR reports.
“Exchanged traded fund (ETF) investment flows have slowed but continued inflows and a higher gold price in June pushed global gold ETFs’ total assets under management up by 1% to US$386 billion. Gold demand is projected to drop slightly in H2 2025 and remain at around 4,100 tonnes a year over the outlook period.”
Sybil is located 135km west of Townsville (Sunshine head office) and 140km north of Charters Towers. Epithermal gold was first identified at Francis Creek in 1986 through classic colloform, crustiform and cockade epithermal vein textures.
The project lies north of Charters Towers in close proximity to the Ravenswood Consolidated Project and is prospective for ‘high-grade’, epithermal gold.
First identified in the mid 1980s, Sybil’s epithermal system shares many geological affinities with the Pajingo Au Mine, 200km south.
The Noosa conference is being held between 12-14 November 2025, at the Peppers Noosa Resort. Mining.com.au is a media partner for this year’s event.
Write to Maddison Elliott at Mining.com.au
Images: Sunshine Metals
