Star Minerals (ASX:SMS) will consider executing potential joint venture (JV) agreements to develop its emerging portfolio in Western Australia.
The company is developing the advanced Tumblegum South Project located 40km south of Meekatharra, as well as the 349km-square West Bryah Project situated some 140km north of Meekatharra.
Speaking to Mining.com.au on the sidelines of the Brisbane Mining Investor Conference, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Greg Almond says the company will consider a range of growth options including JVs. While the structure and equity component of any JV vehicle remains open, the company has plenty of options given its exposure to a renowned gold mining region.
“The main focus for us is completing the work at Tumblegum. So that’s our current resource that we’ve got 42,500 ounces and we’ve just completed a diamond drill program there and currently we’re going through and doing a resource update. So, that will be coming out in the next couple of weeks.
I obviously can’t speculate too much on that until I see the report, but I’d like to think those numbers will be bigger and better and then once we’ve got that out, we’ll obviously be working hard to progress that and figure out the final home for that deposit. Whether we JV with someone or partner or look as a sales agreement or whatever we do.”
“There’s plenty of people around, there plenty of people we can partner with and we’re going to come out of there with pretty good high-grade dirt”
Almond says given the prospective region where Star’s assets are located there is no shortage of prospective JV partners it could consider executing an agreement with, should the company decide to take that route.
“There’s plenty of people around, there plenty of people we can partner with and we’re going to come out of there with pretty good high-grade dirt. We’re going to be running around 3 grams per tonne with a lot of people up there at 1 to 1.5 grams per tonne, so we think we’re going to be quite a good sweetener for anyone else. We’re pretty confident we’ll be able to find a good home for our material and then obviously, once that’s sort of happening at Tumblegum South, we’ll be able to progress the West Bryah Project, which is a big exploration package, about 450km-square square.”
Look, we’re in one of the top mining jurisdictions in the world. It’s a great area to operate. There’s great infrastructure, road connections. There’s plenty of excellent contractors that work up there so we can move people, equipment, material around easily. We’re very happy to be where we are in WA. It’s a great place to work and probably the best place in the world to be looking for gold or other minerals. Absolutely.”
Star has already begun leveraging from its commercial relationships. It was able to quickly execute a drilling program during September 2022 and has since completed core photography, logging, and sampling activities with the final results returned in this month.
On 21 March, Star reported it had received the assay results from its diamond drilling campaign at Tumblegum South, which was drilled in 2 programs consisting of 3 holes for a total of 162m in 2020, then a further 2 holes in 2022 for a total of 354.8m. The first program was designed to provide structural and potential metallurgical information, while the second program was planned to pass through multiple modelled geological zones that were interpreted from the previous RC drilling programs.
The diamond drilling program was planned to test the interpretation of the geology based on the previous exploration data that Star has and served as a way to increase the confidence of the interpretation and modelling of this information. Almond says the success of the diamond drilling shows that the current data set is robust enough to use as a tool for a resource update, which will then be used as an input for further scoping, engineering and environmental works.
The recent aforementioned drill results include 2.1m @ 20.49g/t Au in hole BGDD002 from 26.7m downhole including 0.94m @ 42.59g/t Au from 26.7m downhole, and 0.4m @ 41.5g/t Au in hole TDH004 from 62.7m downhole.
Write to Adam Orlando at Mining.com.au
Images: Star Minerals Ltd
