Surefire gets nod to hammer drill bit into WA copper targets

Surefire Resources has confirmed it has secured clearance to launch an 11-hole, 2200m maiden drilling campaign at its recently-discovered Phat Boy copper prospect in Western Australia’s Mid West region.

Management says its planned campaign, after obtaining program of works (PoW) approval from the WA Department of Energy, Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety (DEMIRS), will comprise the 11 reverse-circulation (RC) holes, each to a maximum depth of about 200m. It notes existing tracks at the site will enable access, with preparation works for drilling to begin immediately.

The company is looking to add to its established critical minerals portfolio to complement its promising vanadium, titanium, gold and iron ore plays in the same area.

The Phat Boy prospect, part of the company’s 100 per cent-owned Yidby East project, consists of four coincident copper-zinc anomalous zones and is interpreted to sit within a similar geological and structural setting to 29Metals’ world-class Golden Grove volcanogenic-hosted massive sulphide (VHMS) deposit.

Management says the anomalous zones have been delineated along the margin of an inferred shear zone for about 3km and lie adjacent to an outcropping folded banded-iron formation (BIF). The Phat Boy prospect sits within the southern portion of its ground, where previous exploration drilling highlighted native copper and sulphides.

The company is conducting follow-up soil sampling across the highly-anomalous copper-zinc zones encountered during its initial soil program on the northern flank of the BIF. It expects to drill-test the most prospective targets generated from the sampling.

It is planning to focus on four target areas – aptly named T1, T2, T3 and T4 – that sit east of its Yidby gold project and the Money geochemical target. Management says the initial soil program identified a significant 5km-long cohesive trend of anomalism, highlighting three zones featuring coincident anomalous zinc for priority follow-up sampling.

The initial program was an outstanding success, uncovering broad-scale, multi-element anomalism with key elements running at or exceeding the selected 100 parts per million threshold, including 310ppm copper, 100ppm zinc, 100ppm cobalt and 452ppm sulphur. In addition, five rock samples were analysed by the same method, with one delivering anomalous base metal results including 270ppm nickel, 460ppm copper, 200ppm zinc and 100ppm cobalt.

The Phat Boy prospect is about 50km south/south-east of Golden Grove and other nearby VHMS deposits in the same belt. Golden Grove is a multi-commodity VHMS project endowed primarily with copper-lead-zinc-gold-silver mineralisation, containing about 15.1 million tonnes of ore reserves.

Surefire holds the huge Victory Bore project, also in WA’s Mid West, that has a mineral resource of 464 million tonnes at 0.3 per cent vanadium oxide, 5.12 per cent titanium oxide and magnetite iron going 17.7 per cent. It boasts a reserve of 93 million tonnes at marginally higher grades.

Management plans to produce 1.25 million tonnes of a vanadium-titanium magnetite concentrate from the project annually and then use a downstream process to convert the upgraded ore into a myriad of in-demand products.

The company also has plans to become a leading supplier of critical minerals to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). It recently signed memorandums of understanding (MoUs) with the KSA Ministry of Investment (MISA) and two private Saudi companies.

The MOUs have been put in place with a view to completing binding agreements for a joint venture (JV) structure that will establish a framework for investment into Surefire’s flagship Victory Bore vanadium-iron project.

The JV will have a dual purpose of also developing a mineral processing facility in Saudi Arabia to process magnetite concentrate from Victory Bore.

There have been recent rumblings about an impending copper shortage as huge global projects wind down and replacement sources find it is a lengthy process to obtain the relevant permits and approvals to begin mining the red metal.

However, copper is one commodity that the market believes will grow exponentially in the coming decades as the ramp-up in producing cleaner energy gathers momentum – and Surefire wants to be one of the new breed of suppliers satisfying market demand.

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