Caedmon Marriott is heading to Resourcing Tomorrow in London next week for his first time as head of Western Mines Group (ASX:WMG) to bring the junior explorer’s Mulga Tank nickel sulphide discovery into the spotlight abroad.
“I’ve previously attended the event many times as a buy-side mining fund manager in London but this is my first time attending and presenting as Western Mines Group,” he tells Mining.com.au.
In a past life, Marriott worked as a buy-side mining analyst at GLG Global Mining Fund, Och-Ziff Capital and JPMorgan Natural Resources Fund.
Now firmly at the helm of Western Mines, he says he will be presenting the company’s Mulga Tank nickel sulphide discovery, “what could be a globally significant western world producer of low carbon nickel and a valuable source to supply the global energy transition”.
Mulga Tank is the company’s flagship asset located 190km east-northeast of Kalgoorlie in the Duketon Domain of the Burtville Terrane, in the Eastern Goldfields Province of the Yilgarn Craton, Western Australia.
Western Mines describes it as a “belt scale opportunity” spanning 425km2 of the “significantly underexplored” Minigwal Greenstone Belt.
The company says drilling has uncovered an extensive magmatic nickel sulphide mineral system, with the majority of holes drilled through sand cover intersecting visible nickel sulphide mineralisation including Mt Keith-style disseminated nickel sulphide mineralisation.
In the past 2.5 years, Western Mines has drilled over 80 holes totalling 33,417m, with over 70 holes intersecting nickel sulphide mineralisation.
BHP’s (ASX:BHP) Mt Keith Mine, located 85km from Wiluna, hosts 643.7 million tonnes @ 0.58% nickel. It is a major komatiite-hosted nickel deposit.
Mulga Tank contains a 15km trend of interpreted komatiite flow channels emanating from the Mulga Tank intrusion that have received little to no exploration focus to date.
Western Mines notes that the mineralisation styles present at Mt Keith, the 50-million-tonne Perseverance mine and the 35-million-tonne Kambalda mine have also been uncovered at Mulga Tank, which is located in the same region of Western Australia.
Marriott says London’s ‘Mines and Money’, now the Resourcing Tomorrow conference, was the original ‘Mines and Money’ event and a major European and northern hemisphere conference.
“It seems to have evolved to be a lot more future facing critical minerals focused, which is well suited to WMG’s nickel sulphide project, but I’m sure still remains a great meeting place for mining projects and capital investors in London and Europe,” he explains.
Western Mines recently completed a $1.08 million placement to support ongoing exploration, including metallurgical testwork, reverse circulation and diamond drilling, and geochemical assaying.
The proceeds will also be used for geophysics and technical work with the aim to deliver an initial mineral resource estimate.
In terms of the differences between the London and Australian markets, Marriott says London has larger pools of capital available, funds able to write bigger cheques but is more risk averse.
“Australia is more speculative, everyone chasing ‘tenbaggers’ but with that risk a lot of exploration projects can be ‘zeros’,” he says.
“London would tend to come in more at the resource-Scoping Study-PFS stage, where a project is no longer going to be a ‘zero’ and funds can back projects that are going to make healthy IRR investment returns.”
The goal for Marriott: “To meet a range of critical metals investors interested in investing in nickel sulphide and backing the development of a major new western world discovery.”
Resourcing Tomorrow runs from 3-5 December 2024 at the Business Design Centre in London.
This year’s spotlight is on breaking out of the echo chamber, urging miners to lead the charge in the global energy transition. Over 2,000 participants from more than 100 countries are expected to attend.
Write to Angela East at Mining.com.au
Images: Resourcing Tomorrow
