Buxton Resources’ growing union with mining giant IGO has set up the company for a big 2024, with the latter pumping in $579,000 to help fund a new exploration campaign at their Copper Wolf joint venture (JV) project in Arizona.
It comes on the back of a busy financial quarter where Buxton also advanced its Graphite Bull and Quick Shears projects in Western Australia.
Management this week revealed financial figures from its latest quarter, showing it had nearly $1.6 million in the bank at the end of December before receiving the Copper Wolf cash call from IGO. The quarterly numbers also included a $500,000 milestone payment from the company’s ASX 100-listed partner in relation to their Quick Shears JV.
The payment was triggered last November when IGO’s first diamond drillhole into the JV’s Dogleg prospect at Quick Shears in the West Kimberley region confirmed high-grade massive nickel sulphides from 179.06m depth.
Management received shareholder approval in October 2022 to enter into the earn-in and JV agreement with IGO for Copper Wolf, leading to the first drilling campaign within the ground for more than three decades. The program subsequently threw up a cracking 405.38m intercept at 0.35 per cent copper.
The intercept also included an average of 0.05 per cent molybdenum and management says a site visit by an independent expert provided confirmation that the company is sitting on a large porphyry-hosted copper-moly system.
Buxton Resources chief executive officer Marty Moloney said: “2024 is shaping up to be a busy year for Buxton with drilling planned at Copper Wolf in Arizona, at Graphite Bull in the Murchison and at the Dogleg discovery in the West Kimberley. We’ll progress our grassroots portfolio in WA, including securing permitting and access to the Centurion target and will continue our project generation and assessment of high-quality opportunities.”
During the past quarter, Buxton also updated its inferred resource estimate for Graphite Bull, which sits 280 km east of Carnarvon in WA’s Murchison region, to 4 million tonnes at 16.2 per cent total graphite content.
The company says exploration expenditure for the past quarter was $733,000, with most of the amount associated with field work at Copper Wolf, metallurgical studies on Graphite Bull and other ongoing project assessments, including looking at copper and other commodity opportunities in the United States.
Management says it remains engaged with the Wajarri Yamaji Aboriginal Corporation and the Burringurrah Land Committee with a view to undertaking a heritage survey at Graphite Bull during the current quarter.
With IGO’s significant backing and encouraging exploration signs from last year’s work programs, Buxton now appears adequately funded to tear into its planned activities for 2024.
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