Maronan Metals (ASX:MMA) is maintaining an open mindset in regards to its namesake lead-silver and copper-gold deposit in northwest Queensland, says Managing Director Richard Carlton.
Speaking to Mining.com.au on the sidelines of this year’s Brisbane Mining and Investor’s Conference, Carlton explains that while the company remains in ongoing informal talks with various third parties it remains fixated on delivering the mine itself.
“What we can say is that we’re talking to everyone and we’re aware, even at government level, there’s all these mumblings about how we should use infrastructure better, what are the opportunities? So we’re open to that.
But no, there’s no one that has signed up or expressed enough interest to want to do something significant with us. We’re focused on making this a mine ourselves in our own right.”
However, Carlton explains those with processing facilities would be the “most ideal people to work with”.
The comments from Carlton follow the company on 12 March 2024 delineating an updated resource estimate for the project.
The MD told this newservice this is the first indicated resource for the project, and included the first inferred gold only resource.
As such, Carlton believes it is this latest announcement which saw the company receive quite a bit of attention at the conference.
“I’m quite blown away by that [attendance].
One guy said, ‘it was refreshing to see that you guys had one specific project you’re keeping focused on…you guys are clearly focused’. More than one person said that we’ve done what we said we were going to do, [which] was also impressive.”
Moving forward, the MD says the company will look to publish a report on metallurgical testwork, focusing on copper-gold and silver-lead, coupled with an updated Scoping Study for the project, taking into account the newly defined resources, in the next couple of months.
“We’re hopeful that this platform of putting out the new resource will help us raise the money to do the drilling.
But we’re now really clear, after this program has given us some good targets, this is where we want to drill. This is where we think we can increase the quality of the resource. So we’re now fired up and ready to go. I’d like to think if we were back here this time next year, that we had some good drilling progress reports.
We’ve got a great promising project here. It’s a big project and has great potential. And it’s silver, lead and copper-gold. It’s a major deposit.”
Maronan Metals is a mineral explorer focused on realising the growth potential of its namesake project in the Cloncurry region of northwest Queensland.
Write to Adam Drought at Mining.com.au
Images: Maronan Metals
