Right Resources has unearthed a promising tungsten exploration opportunity at its Moonlight prospect, part of the company's Blue project near Tumbarumba in southern New South Wales, after mapping a mineralised structural corridor stretching more than three kilometres.
The company’s early-stage work at the prospect, part of its Blue tungsten-gold-bismuth project near Tumbarumba, has delivered high rock-chip grades of up to 0.61 per cent tungsten trioxide, with a side serving of anomalous gold grading up to 0.25 grams per tonne.
The initial results have defined several priority targets within a structural corridor that extends for more than three kilometres and up to 500m wide in places. The best rock-chip results include an impressive 0.61 per cent tungsten trioxide, along with other solid hits of 0.48 per cent and 0.22 per cent. The company says multiple samples returned more than 0.1 per cent of the critical mineral.
Notably, the company says ongoing field mapping has continued to bear fruit, identifying additional outcropping quartz lodes, veins and pegmatites that host visible scheelite, a key tungsten ore mineral. These fresh lodes, up to two metres thick, have now been sampled, with lab assays pending.
Having completed the Right to Negotiate process under the Native Title Act 1993, the company has been able to up the pace on systematic surface mapping and sampling at Moonlight to define and rank tungsten targets for drilling.
The Moonlight discovery has given Right Resources another priority target just as it kicks off a maiden 2000 metre air-core drilling program across the broader Blue project, which spans a massive 2459-square-kilometre area across 10 wholly owned licences in the highly prospective Lachlan Fold Belt.
Right Resources managing director Graham Howard said: "These initial results provide a strong start to our evaluation of Moonlight, confirming tungsten mineralisation at surface and returning multiple results above 0.1% WO3 within the northwest-trending shear zone. Importantly, our mapping is continuing to identify additional scheelite-bearing lodes, veins and pegmatites within this broader structural setting, with assays from a number of these newly identified areas still pending."
The company’s other key asset in the Tumbarumba region is its Pilot gold project. The historic Pilot Reef mine reportedly produced 2662 tonnes of ore grading a remarkable 38g/t gold, equivalent to more than an ounce of gold per tonne, highlighting the high-grade nature of the mineralisation exploited by the old-timers. Recent metallurgical testwork on mullock-dump material from Pilot delivered solid gold recoveries of up to 90 per cent.
Notably, management believes Pilot may form part of a reduced intrusion-related gold system, a style of mineralisation that is often accompanied by tungsten, providing a neat geological link between its two key projects. The company has already completed widely spaced diamond drilling across Pilot, systematically investigating a 2.4km by 2.9km area using geological mapping and geophysics.
Tungsten is a designated critical mineral in Australia, the US and Europe, prized for its extreme hardness and high melting point. It is essential for a host of industrial, aerospace and defence applications, from cutting tools to armour-piercing munitions. Renewed efforts to establish resilient non-Chinese supply chains have increased attention on new projects, with S&P Global recently reporting a letter of interest for up to US$900 million (A$1.28 billion) to support a major new tungsten source.
With its first pass at Moonlight returning high-grade tungsten at surface across a significant structural corridor, Right Resources has now firmly established the prospect as a priority target. As the company waits on a fresh batch of assays from lodes already showing visible mineralisation, the story at Moonlight appears to be just getting started.
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