Everest Metals Corporation is a very different looking company today from when it was known as Twenty Seven Co up until last year. It has totally renewed its board which is now led by mining man Mark Caruso and assisted by COO and former finance professional Simon Phillips. The new board has put its foot on a curious new project that boasts multiple near surface gold reefs and hints of DeGrussa-style copper at depth in WA’s Midwest.
Notably, Everest took a pain pill late last year and consolidated its capital structure down to just 106 million shares in a 50 to 1 consolidation after breaching 5 billion shares on issue.
Caruso brought with him a new board of mining types who have been around the block a few times and have some runs on the board in the mining and legal fraternities.
Caruso himself has moved a lot of dirt in his time as the owner of a substantial earthmoving and civil earthworks business and in various ASX-listed roles. As the Executive Chairman of Allied Gold Mining PLC, he led the company to London and Toronto Stock Exchange listings and ultimately a 1.2-billion-dollar merger with St Barbara back in 2012.
Everest’s first call to action under the new look board is to wrap up the deal to acquire 90 per cent ownership of the advanced Revere gold project north-east of Meekatharra in WA.
The project’s 82 square kilometre land position boasts a system of rich gold reefs known as the “Revere Reefs” averaging between 5 grams per tonne and a whopping 50 grams per tonne gold within a larger halo of lower-grade mineralisation.
Everest plans to test Revere’s surface gold potential over the next few months through an initial 36,000-tonne bulk sampling campaign along with a suite of metallurgical test work. Management says the program could permit short-term gold mining and production via a mobile gravity plant.
Revere’s short-term production potential is just one facet of the prospective patch which lies along strike from Sandfire’s DeGrussa copper-gold mine, 55km to the north-east.
At the time of its discovery in 2010, DeGrussa boasted the highest reported copper grades in the Australasian region and went on to churn out roughly 300,000 tonnes of copper concentrate each year in addition to about a tonne of gold annually.
Interestingly, despite its proximity to DeGrussa, only a handful of historical drill holes pepper the underlying bedrock beneath Revere to depths over 150m. With much of the metal-rich massive sulphide mineralisation up the road at DeGrussa buried below 300m, it is the allure of what lies beneath Revere that could be the real prize for Everest.
In what amounted to a somewhat casual mention in its recently tabled company presentation, Everest said it has seen “hints of DeGrussa style mineralisation at depth at Revere.” It is comments like that, buried deep in larger documents, that provide a twinge of excitement for savvy market followers.
Everest is currently undertaking a detailed geophysical reinterpretation over Revere as it seeks to light up a suite of conductor’s prospective for another DeGrussa-style deposit. Pending the results, Everest is set to wheel in the diamond drill rig in the second quarter of the year.
In Western Australia’s Mid West region, Everest has stitched up an exclusive farm-in deal to earn a 51 per cent stake in the Mt Edon lithium, caesium and tantalum project. The deal follows a recently completed due diligence program that yielded RC drill results of up to 1220 parts per million lithium, 3670ppm rubidium and 354ppm caesium.
Everest’s RC program was designed to follow up on a suite of solid rock chip sampling results collected across a pegmatite field spanning 6.4 km. Highlights from the program include specimens grading up to an impressive 2.7 per cent lithium oxide, 1046ppm caesium oxide and 5057ppm tantalum oxide.
With two strategic drill-ready prospects waiting in the wings, Everest has off-loaded several projects – or parts thereof.
The first deal was made with Rio Tinto Exploration, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the namesake mining goliath to probe a raft of untested lithium targets at Everest’s North Rover project near Sandstone.
To earn the 80 per cent joint venture interest, Rio must conduct a minimum of 500 metres of drilling in the first two years and sole-fund $5 million in non-gold exploration. Everest retains all rights to gold at North Rover.
Further afield, the ink is drying on a binding joint venture agreement with Stelar Metals covering its large NSW land holding near Broken Hill.
An upfront payment of $250,000 in cash was accompanied by a package of Stelar shares of similar value. Milestone payments look likely to add a further $500,000 in cash or shares to the company’s kitty.
Whilst the east-coast tenure is prospective for a suite of precious and base metals, Stelar has wasted no time in etching out a swarm of drill-ready lithium-rich pegmatites in the historic Euriowie tin field.
With its 10 per cent free carried interest, Everest can cheer from the sidelines while Stelar Metals goes after the prize in the NSW lithium field.
Everest is also looking to expand its battery and precious metals portfolio after lodging an application for two prospective tenement packages near Alice Springs in the Northern Territory.
The total application area covers the Georgina and Amadeus projects that include 15 exploration licences covering an area around 10,200 square kilometres.
The Georgina tenements sit around 220km north-east of Alice Springs on the Georgina Basin whilst Amadeus is about 150km west of Alice Springs and just north of the Amadeus Basin.
Everest says the region is characterised by a large variety of mineral deposits including lode gold, volcanic-hosted massive sulphides, iron oxide copper gold and lithium-tantalum hosted pegmatites in addition to rare earths, uranium and phosphate mineralisation.
Arafura Rare Earths’ renowned Nolans project is neatly wedged directly between the Georgina and Amadeus projects and boasts a resource estimate of 56 million tonnes at an average 2.6 per cent rare earth oxides and 11 per cent phosphate.
Arafura has built an impressive billion-dollar market cap on the back of Nolans.
Everest Metals Corporation chief operating officer, Simon Phillips, said: “The transition to EMC and hard work by all involved will manifest through key work programs over coming months.
The Bulk Sampling of High Grade Gold ore at The Revere Gold Project will be followed by the processing of the ore through a Geko Gravity Circuit plant and use the production criteria for resource and reserve estimation.
Concurrently, EMC is very excited to Drill its Cu/Au Degrussa style VMS targets at depth on the Revere Project as well drilling the highly fertile Pegmatite Field at the Paynes Find Mt Edon project.
Active proposed drilling programs by its JV partners, Rio Tinto (WA) and Stelar Metals (Broken Hill) round out the complementary Battery Mineral Projects.
The potential for exceptional news over the next few months is very high with this level of activity.”
A little-known fun fact about Phillips’ boss, Caruso, is that he was the major shareholder of ASX-listed Mineral Commodities when that company was the major shareholder of tiny ASX-listed minnow, Allied Mining and Processing a couple of decades ago.
Allied Mining and Processing had some mobile gold plant technology and two very early-stage iron ore plays in the Pilbara that were pretty much sitting dormant.
As the Chairman of Allied, Caruso ended up negotiating and doing a deal with a chap by the name of Andrew Forrest who subsequently took the reins of Allied – and a big slab of its shares and options.
Forrest subsequently changed his company’s name to Fortescue Metals Group and the rest is history.
The two iron ore projects sitting dormant on Allied’s books at the time were the Christmas Creek and Mt Nicholas projects and keen market followers would be aware these projects went on to corner-stone Fortescue’s Chichester Ranges suite of iron ore deposits.
But what of Caruso? Well he stayed on for a while and was a Director of Fortescue Metals Group when it was still just a glint in Forrest’s eye and he subsequently sold out his position in FMG for quote; “not nearly enough money”.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au
By Helen Barling
