Javelin Minerals will acquire high-resolution aeromagnetic and radiometric data covering its Mt Ida-Ida Valley tenure near Leonora in Western Australia to help charge its hunt for precious and base metals, lithium and rare earths.
The company says much of its ground to be surveyed is proximate to the gold-rich Ballard Fault, Delta Lithium’s newly-discovered gold and lithium occurrences and the lithium, precious and base metals activities of St George Mining. The 1100-square-kilometre survey will cover eight exploration licences and bring the total ground covered by the data to almost 2000sq km as management seeks more information on the structural and lithological controls on mineralisation.
Planned with a flight line spacing of 50m and a survey sensor height of between 35m and 45m above ground level, the data acquisition is expected to be complete by the end of the month before Perth’s Southern Geoscience Consultants process the data.
Javelin Minerals executive director Matthew Blake said: “Javelin has now built up a large strategic holding in the highly prospective Mt Ida region, west of the significant gold mining operations at Menzies and Leonora. This additional airborne geophysics complements the 2021/22 AMAG and will provide important structural information over some of our tenements which have had no recent low level detailed magnetics and radiometrics.”
Abutting the company’s ground to the south is neighbour Delta, which made headlines last week with its Mt Ida project and solid lithium assays going as high as 12m at 1.6 per cent lithium oxide from 203m, 11m at 1.52 per cent lithium oxide from 92m, 11m at 1.3 per cent lithium oxide from 75.7m and 7m at 1.1 per cent lithium oxide from 35m. Delta’s ground also gave up some gold, with assays showing results as high as 4m at 41.2 grams per tonne from 79m, 11m at 7.3g/t from 68m, 5m at 12g/t from 66m and 3m at 17.3g/t from 71m.
Mt Ida continues to produce good results for Delta as the company completes grade-control drilling to convert deep down-plunge inferred resources to the indicated category for meaningful inclusion into feasibility studies. Mt Ida has a current resource of 14.6 million tonnes at 1.2 per cent lithium oxide and 3.1 million tonnes at 4.2 g/t gold, giving 412,000 ounces.
St George also has some ground just a stone’s throw to the west of Javelin and has been working up some lithium targets as part of its Mt Alexander project – which is on the same structural trend as Delta’s Mt Ida play. It has mapped an 8 km-long zone around its Manta prospect where drilling identified a 121m-thick, flat-lying fractionated pegmatite, proving the system is mineralised.
On the rare earths front, Javelin has completed its own tailings, soil and outcrop sampling program on its ground, which returned up to 0.11 per cent total rare earth oxides (TREO), adding some flavour to the mixed exploration potential.
The company now awaits the delivery of a fresh high-resolution geophysical dataset to guide next year’s exploration push. So, watch this space.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au
By Andrew Duffy
