Strickland fires up six-rig blitz in Serbian gold-base metal hunt

Strickland Metals has launched its largest exploration assault at the company’s flagship 7.4-million-ounce gold equivalent Rogozna gold and base metals project in Serbia, with first assays due back as early as next week.

Armed with six diamond rigs and a war chest of nearly $40 million, eight diamond holes have already been completed. The company is charging toward a maiden resource at the gold-only Gradina prospect and sniffing out a potential game-changing porphyry giant at its Jezerska Reka prospect.

The drilling program is also targeting resource extensions at Shanac and Medenovac, together with early-stage exploration at the company’s Kotlovi and Obradov Potok prospects.

But the real fireworks are at Gradina, where four rigs are zeroed in on the high-grade northern zone, chasing shallow gold hits to deliver a maiden resource by year’s end.

Strickland plans to smash out 20,000 metres of diamond drilling across 40 holes at the prospect to unlock high-potential up-dip gold mineralisation on Gradina Hill. The company is also constructing a new access track to push into Gradina’s southern zones, which is expected to be ready by late May.

Strickland Metals managing director Paul L’Herpiniere said: “Following an exceptional year of exploration at Rogozna in 2024, which resulted in a 2 million gold equivalent ounce increase in our resource base to 7.4 million gold equivalent ounces, we are excited to increase our efforts to grow and progress the project during 2025.”

Over at Shanac, two rigs are hammering away, hot on the trail of a high-grade skarn zone unveiled last year with a show-stopping hit of 89.7m at 4 grams per tonne (g/t) gold. Ten diamond holes are planned, totalling 6000m, with four already in the bag. The company aims to flesh out shallow, high-grade zones that could fast-track development and supercharge the project’s momentum.

At Medenovac, four holes for 3000m will probe just north of its 1.28-million-ounce gold equivalent resource to chase promising high-grade hits that didn’t make it into the maiden estimate due to sparse drilling.

With one eye on making a transformational discovery, Strickland will also use some valuable rig time to drop three diamond holes - totalling 2000m - into the company’s exciting Jezerska Reka copper gold porphyry prospect.

Porphyry deposits can often comprise bulk-scale operations with huge tonnage, low-grade, easy-to-mine deposits, which can stretch from surface to deep underground.

A review last year by renowned porphyry expert David Cooke of the potential for intrusive bodies across the wider Rogozna project reported a significantly improved technical understanding of Jezerska Reka’s porphyry potential.

Cooke’s review suggested the skarn deposits and epithermal veins previously found at Jezerska could belong to a bigger system and may provide the opportunity for porphyry-style mineralisation at depth.

Skarn-hosted systems as big as Rogozna are extremely rare and are often linked to giant porphyry copper-gold deposits, much like McMoRan’s Grasberg-Ertsberg monster deposit in Indonesia.

As part of the hunt for additional porphyry targets, Strickland will also kick off greenfield exploration in the central Rogozna corridor, where younger volcanic cover may be masking other major systems.

Early-stage exploration is also planned at the company’s Kotlovi prospect, 350m southwest of Medenovac. A standout hit lit the match last year with a 12m intercept grading 5.7g/t gold, within a larger section of 40.3m running at 2.6g/t gold from 558m. 

Strickland will now plunge five holes totalling 4000m into the prospect to scope out both strike and dip extensions. The gap between Kotlovi and Medenovac will also get a solid test.

The company intends to round off its drill program with a thorough investigation of three further mostly untested targets.

At Obradov Potok, a massive 2-square-kilometre anomaly will be hit with five holes, while Red Creek, just 500m from Shanac, is set for 1500m of drill testing to target strong multi-element signals and historic workings. At Cesme, one deep 800m hole aims to extend a juicy previous 125m skarn hit grading 2.1g/t gold equivalent.

To cope with the massive uplift in workload from the 50,000m program, the company has employed a further 10 technical and support staff in Serbia.

Sitting on $40M in the bank, which was recently topped up with a $5M placement to Chinese heavyweight Zijin Mining, Strickland’s latest drilling blitz at Rogozna is firmly locked and loaded. 

With more than 100 diamond holes on the menu, the company’s news flow is likely to come thick and fast, keeping the punters focused as its Serbian juggernaut starts to roll.

Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au