Taruga taps Adriatic brains trust for WA | Australian Markets

The founders of the uber-successful $1.5 billion Adriatic Metals have again joined forces, this time at ASX minnow Taruga Minerals. Taruga has been quietly amassing land in Western Australia’s Gascoyne area with loopy high-grade historic polymetallic reveals.

The company has picked up three tenements affected by previous workings that had been traditionally mined at grades as high as 77 per cent lead, 26 per cent copper and 301 grams per tonne (g/t) silver.

In 2017, Paul Cronin and Eric De Mori, now chairman and Director of Taruga respectively, had been instrumental in figuring out the Vares silver/gold/lead/zinc deposit in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The duo managed to select up the project that was in non-public palms and record Adriatic Metals on the back of it at 20 cents per share.

Fast ahead a few years and Adriatic is now trading at $4.26 a share with a market cap of a bit beneath $1.5b and it lately broke ground, inserting Cronin and De Mori into the rarified air of company sorts who’ve really constructed an working mine – and a massive one.

Perhaps even more remarkably, each nonetheless seem on Adriatic’s prime 20 record some eight years later among the many common suspect names resembling Citicorp Nominees and JP Morgan Nominees which are inclined to invade the higher echelons of massive company share registers.

Taruga had beforehand gone down a rabbit gap in South Australia’s Gawler Craton with a project that didn’t fairly grasp collectively, largely on the back of some vital regulatory hurdles.

Last October, Cronin and De Mori, backed by geologist and technical director Dave Chapman, pivoted the company in the direction of WA’s Gascoyne area, initially by pegging two contiguous leases after which taking an option over a third.

The historical past of all three items of ground factors to a number of outcropping ore our bodies, previous workings that had been mined at ridiculously high grades traditionally and an abundance of alternatives to chase silver, lead, zinc, copper and gold. At a first look, the silver and lead are wanting the products and the copper is no slouch both.

Notably, the project space has not seen a drill rig in a long time.

The freshly staked ground – dubbed the Uaroo West and Uaroo East tasks – covers 306 sq. kilometres and consists of the previous Uaroo-Hill mine.

The third, generally known as the Thowagee tenement, takes Taruga’s total contiguous landholding within the area to more than 416 sq. kilometres throughout a 20km broad stretch.

The Gascoyne has emerged as a hotspot for high-grade base and treasured metals of late with a wave of successes, together with Black Cat Syndicate’s revival of the Paulsens gold mine and Dreadnought Resources’ standout Gifford Creek crucial metals and Star of Mangaroon gold discoveries.

At Taruga’s Uaroo-Hill prospect, miners within the Fifties hauled out practically 20 tonnes of ore grading a whopping 77.7 per cent lead and 301g/t silver. Just down the monitor, the Donelly-Kooline website noticed related motion with lead working at 55.8 per cent and 129g/t silver pulled from shallow workings in 1952.

Over in Uaroo West, a small Nineteen Sixties copper operation reportedly delivered 2.95t at 26 per cent copper.

Rock chip samples from a sheared banded iron formation at Uaroo West that threads by way of the allow have even returned gold values up to 1.1g/t gold.

Despite this tantalising mineral legacy, neither Uaroo West nor Uaroo East have ever seen a drill gap for base or treasured metals.

The Thowagee lease is no greenfield punt both. Old workings from the unique mid-Twentieth century on the Thowagee mine produced more than 15t of lead and practically 6 kilograms of silver, with rock chip assays lighting up for lead, silver, copper, zinc—and a sprint of gold.

Standout outcomes from the samples embody one working at 286g/t silver and 59.3 per cent lead. A second reveals 0.6g/t gold, 134g/t silver 30.3 per cent lead, whereas a third jagged 0.55g/t gold and 19.5 per cent copper.

While the market tends to know gold and gold grades properly, silver is much less properly understood. From a purely financial standpoint, about 90g of silver is the equal of 1g gold, which suggests the standout 286g silver rock chip goes the equal of about 3grams per tonne gold.

Apart from the compelling historic proof, the company says it was drawn to the project by a combine of key geological options – together with the Goordeman and Uaroo faults that run instantly by way of the tenement bundle about 10kms aside like a pair of parallel freight trains. The faults doubtlessly trigger all kinds of havoc with the geology – the perfect setting for enriched hydrothermal fluids to sneak in.

Hydrothermal vein systems are current, as are mineralised banded iron formations and late-stage mafic intrusions, which is a potent cocktail for mineralisation.

Beneath the floor, a geological jigsaw must be put collectively.

The ground hosts the Leake Springs metamorphics, a key unit related to different mineralised zones within the area and has sniffs of pegmatites, doubtlessly additionally waving a flag for lithium and uncommon earths.

The distinctive grades of silver, copper and related polymetallic minerals instantly attracted us to this bundle, and the mix of complicated geology plus main constructions within and cross-cutting the tenements is compelling.

With allowing underway for the Uaroo leases, exploration subject work has now kicked off at Thowagee involving the mapping and sampling of two historic mines on the tenement. These outcomes needs to be attention-grabbing.

At the identical time, the company is dusting off historic information and lining up follow-up applications geared toward tracing and testing the mineralised shear zones that snake throughout its permits.

To sharpen its hunt, Taruga has enlisted geophysical specialists Terra Resources to reprocess regional datasets and nil in on high-priority targets. The highlight is firmly on a north-south working 1km polymetallic pattern between Uaroo Hill and Donnelly-Kooline, which is a component of a very attention-grabbing 5km mineralised belt exhibiting all the best ingredients for a potential discovery.

Taruga has bolstered its exploration prowess with the addition of Luke Blais – a seasoned rock-kicker who spent more than 5 years getting his boots soiled within the Gascoyne with Dreadnought Resources.

Blais was named AMEC’s Prospector of the Year in 2023 for his pivotal position in uncovering Dreadnought’s Gifford Creek carbonatite.

With treasured steel costs hovering and copper beginning to get in on the motion, the northern Gascoyne is prone to heat up given its polymetallic credentials.

History could not repeat, however it does typically rhyme and Cronin and De Mori could properly discover themselves enmeshed in one more severe polymetallic play with Taruga’s Gascoyne ground.

Their greatest drawback shall be attempting to determine which of the historic workings with loopy high grades to take advantage of first – a good drawback to have when the band will get back collectively.

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