Terrain Minerals is poised to launch a multi-mineral exploration mission at two projects in Western Australia after bolstering its bank balance with a timely $1.045 million raise from sophisticated and professional investors.
The raise, including $102,000 from executive director Justin Virgin, smashed its original $750,000 target out of the park as investors scrambled to be involved in the company’s upcoming exploration plans. Management regards the heavily-subscribed placement as a strong show of faith in its plans.
Terrain has several projects it plans to attack with the new funds, including its flagship Smokebush project where it is targeting an interesting mix of gallium, rare earths and gold. Smokebush sits within the Yalgoo-Singleton Greenstone Belt, about 350km north of Perth.
The company has demonstrated that its Larin’s Lane prospect within Smokebush contains gallium and rare earths mineralisation that extends for more than 9km. Recent drilling results revealed multiple high-grade zones of gallium oxide grading up to 53.74 grams per tonne for a 16m stretch from 64m and included a thick intersection of 86m going 17.4g/t from surface.
While the total rare earth oxides (TREO) at Larin’s Lane have graded as high as 3254 parts per million, with the valuable magnet rare earths averaging 25 per cent of TREO, Smokebush also has several gold prospects including Lightning and Monza and its promising Wildflower target.
The company is also awaiting the results of a versatile time domain electromagnetic (VTEM) 1281km line survey that was conducted at its Lort River project where it is investigating an “eye” feature similar to the one that led to IGO’s renowned Nova-Bollinger nickel-copper discovery in WA’s Albany-Fraser belt. Management says the conductor is along the interpreted strike of the Nova deposit, with Lort River sitting about 300km to the south-west.
Terrain Minerals executive director Justin Virgin said: “We expect the VTEM survey results in about three weeks and will then conduct ground surveys at Lort River. The company plans to drill at Smokebush including our Monza and Lightning prospects and to further test our Wildflower target.”
Maiden drilling at Lightning returned 2m at 6.22g/t gold from 61m and 1m at 5.94g/t from 82m. Historic drilling at Monza produced an encouraging 4m at 4.46g/t gold from 51m and 7m going 2.72g/t from 25m.
Interestingly, Terrain plans to drill a few scissor-holes at the prospects to test the orientation of the orebody, as it believes many other gold deposits within the area are drilled in the opposite direction.
And the company is far from ignoring the possibilities at Lort River.
The 2012 discovery by Sirius Resources of the Nova nickel deposit sent the market into a spin and its share price into the stratosphere. An eventual $1.8 billion takeover of Sirius by mining giant IGO followed a few years later in 2015.
The original potential nickel feature was picked up in a State Government survey that is part of the national “Exploring for the Future” project rollout aiming to conduct an airborne EM survey across the entire continent on a 20km line spacing. The intent of the huge survey program is to assess the potential for groundwater in Australia’s arid zones and uncover geological features that may host mineral deposits.
Terrain is planning to undertake ground EM surveys once its VTEM results are back, with targeted drilling to follow. The company is now cashed up to complete its priority exploration programs and will keenly await the results to see which project deserves to capture more attention moving forward.
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By Craig Nolan
