Bushranger Copper-Gold Project – New South Wales
Highlights
Bushranger Copper/Gold Project - New South Wales, Australia
- Xtract completed two phases of diamond core drilling on the Bushranger Project for over 35,000m of drilling.
- Racecourse Mineral Resource increased from an initial 71Mt @ 0.44% Cu and 0.064g/t Au to 512Mt @ 0.22% CuEq, at a cut-off of 0.1% CuEq
- New mineralised porphyry system discovered at the Ascot Prospect and subsequent drilling resulted in the estimation of a maiden mineral resource of 87Mt @ 0.22% CuEq, at a cut-off of 0.1% CuEq.
- The Bushranger Project contains in excess of 1.3Mt of contained copper-equivalent metal with the combined shallow high-grade zones at the Racecourse and Ascot prospects hosting a total of 225Mt @ 0.33% CuEq.
- A Scoping Study level metallurgical test work programme yielded encouraging copper recovery results generally running at 89-90% for the copper-gold mineralisation from the Racecourse Mineral Resource, producing a copper concentrate averaging 20% copper and silver at payable levels above 30g/t Au.
- Interim results of an open pit mining study modelled 16 economic pit shells on an operational cost basis only, with capital investment excluded and to be finalised upon completion of the study. The 20Mtpa and 25Mtpa open pit options potentially generate significant operating cash margins dependent upon mining rate, copper price and cut-off grade.
- A pre-concentration study using TOMRA, an advanced optical processing technology which uses X-Ray Transmission and machine learning to sort mineralisation into a pre-concentrated ore product achieved an average uplift in typical grade copper samples of 52% across five submitted samples, along with an average mass yield of 36%, meaning that 64% of the original mass of the sample was rejected into the waste product, suggesting that ore sorting has the ability to increase the ore grade whilst reducing the mass to be treated.
- Exploration targets in close proximity to the Racecourse and Ascot Prospect remain untested and have the potential to add to the current higher grade open pit resource.
Lachlan Fold Belt – New South Wales
The Bushranger Project occurs within the Rockley-Gulgong Belt of the Macquarie Arc within the Lachlan Fold Belt (“LFB”), also known as the Lachlan Orogen, which developed at the edge of the palaeo Australian Plate between 450 Ma and 380 Ma years ago. The Bushranger Project hosts the Racecourse Mineral Resource (512Mt @ 0.22% CuEq*, at a cut-off of 0.1% CuEq), and Xtract’s new discovery, the Ascot Mineral Resource (87Mt @ 0.22% CuEq*, at a cut-off of 0.1% CuEq).
The Lachlan Fold Belt is a highly mineralised terrane in an area of excellent infrastructure, and is home to world-class porphyry copper-gold deposits (e.g. Cadia-Ridgeway – 3.5Bt @ 0.26% Cu & 0.4g/t Au, North Parkes – 597Mt @ 0.58% Cu & 0.2g/t Au), epithermal gold deposits (e.g. McPhillamy’s – 69Mt @ 1.04g/t Au, Tomingley – 6.4Mt @ 2.0g/t Au) and Volcanogenic Hosted Massive Sulphide Deposits (e.g. Woodlawn – 7.2Mt @ 6.3% Zn, 1.9% Cu, 2.4% Pb and 0.5g/t Au).
New mineral systems continue to be found within the LFB, such as Alkane Resources Boda Copper-Gold deposit which was discovered in 2019 and Xtract’s own Ascot Prospect Mineral Resource discovered in 2021. The Boda mineral resource is reported as 624Mt @ 0.51g/t AuEq for 10.1 MAuEq.
