Gold Fields Ltd and a number of financial institutions in addition to management and directors of Great Southern Mining have all piled into a $2.5m capital raise that will see Great Southern fire up its WA gold search.
The new placement at 1.7 cents per share will see $2.347,000 drop into the tin and a further $153,000 was committed to by Great Southern directors and management subject to shareholder approval at a general meeting early next year.
The final placement price came in at a modest 6 per cent discount to the last closing price and a mere 4.2 per cent discount to the 10-day volume-weighted average price, hinting there was significant demand for the new shares.
With incoming funds, Great Southern can now act on a priority list of exploration opportunities.
First efforts will be directed toward accelerating drilling campaigns to define resources and extend mineralisation at several advanced targets within its Duketon gold project. The exploration area spans 178 square kilometres covering 13 contiguous leases on the north-south trending Duketon Greenstone Belt, a structure it shares with Regis Resources’ multi-million-ounce Garden Well gold project.
In the past two years the company has completed several successful drilling programs at site, delineating numerous targets such as Golden Boulder, Southern Star and Amy Clarke. The prospects have lit up with shallow, high-grade drill intercepts and gold anomalies extending up to 5km. The plan now is to intensively drill the key targets to delineate an economic resource as soon as possible.
In light of the rampant gold price, currently trading at US$2633 per ounce (AUD$4059) Great Southern has also commission studies on a potential small-scale toll mining operation at its Mon Ami gold project near Laverton.
Seen as the company’s most prospective opportunity for early cashflow, Mon Ami hosts 55,000 ounces of gold grading 1.1 grams per tonne (g/t).
The mineralisation sits on a mining licence with all relevant permits and an existing pit design in place making it essentially “shovel ready.”
Great Southern Mining managing director Matthew Keane said: “The proceeds of this Placement put Great Southern Mining in a strong position to aggressively explore its highly prospective 100% owned Western Australian project portfolio. The Company is entering 2025 well capitalised with exciting drilling programs planned at the Duketon Gold Project with the prospect of a maiden drilling program at the Edinburgh Park JV, under the management of the skilled Gold Fields team”.
Great Southern’s other major exploration focus centres on its Edinburgh Park copper project which sits 100km south-east of Townsville in Queensland which the company shares in joint venture with global top ten gold miner and Great Southern shareholder, Gold Fields Ltd.
Gold Fields, which is spending $15 million on exploration across 6 years to earn the right to 75 per cent of the project, recently revealed a massive 2km-wide induced polarisation anomaly lurking at depth at the project.
According to Great Southern, the geophysical anomaly has the potential to host a large-scale intrusive related porphyry gold-copper and/or epithermal gold deposit, similar to the 3-million-ounce Mount Leyshon gold-silver mine about 120kms to the west.
Surface mapping and geochemical sampling across the 4km by 1km anomaly has kicked up high concentrations of gold, silver, copper and particularly molybdenum which is a typical marker of porphyry deposits and has reinforced the JV’s working theory.
Gold Fields is continuing to run geophysical surveys over the project to identify similar targets before drawing up a priority list for a 2025 drilling campaign.
With the saddle bags full of cash, Great Southern is gearing up for a busy year of WA gold exploration and high hopes of making a meaningful discovery.
If its joint venture partner, Gold Fields Ltd was to also come up trumps with a new copper-gold porphyry discovery on its shared Queensland grounds then Great Southern could well be on its way to becoming a substantial future producer of the yellow metal.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au
By James Pearson
