Medallion Metals accelerates Ravensthorpe gold project as negotiations with IGO about Forrestania continue

Medallion Metals has started a new drilling campaign at its Ravensthorpe gold project as it continues to negotiate with IGO about buying the Cosmic Boy processing plant at Forrestania. Medallion this week told the Australian Securities Exchange it was undertaking 15,000 metres of in-fill drilling to further improve confidence in Ravensthorpe’s high-grade sulphide underground resource. The company said the drilling would also help to de-risk the mine plan for near-term production through Cosmic Boy. It said the high-grade sulphide resource of the project between Ravensthorpe and Hopetoun currently stood at 770,000 ounces of gold at 4.3 grams per tonne, and 36,000 tonnes of copper at a grade of 0.6 per cent. Medallion managing director Paul Bennett said the company had been pushing forward with the key elements required to bring the Ravensthorpe production opportunity to fruition since the announcement of the exclusivity agreement with IGO. “With drilling now under way, we’re looking forward to reporting the first drill results before the end of the month and the pace of that reporting increasing as the second rig mobilises to site next month,” he said. IGO announced in July it was putting its Forrestania nickel mine south of Southern Cross into care and maintenance, with the battery metal’s fortunes remaining in the doldrums following the collapse in the nickel price because of cheap Indonesian product flooding the global market. Soon after, IGO announced it was in talks with Medallion about Cosmic Boy — with the negotiation deal to last nine months and include a three-month extension option. “IGO and Medallion also intend to negotiate on a non-exclusive basis the grant of gold and silver rights to Medallion across the Forrestania tenement package,” IGO said in August. IGO picked up Forrestania in 2022 as part of its ill-fated $1.3 billion takeover of Western Areas. Its full value was later written off entirely. IGO has also placed the once-hyped Cosmos nickel mine near Leinster into care and maintenance to wait out a global price recovery.