GOLD AT FOSTER-BAKER
Opportunity Overview
The Kambalda / St Ives gold camp is one of Australia’s most prolific gold production and discovery centres. Gold has been produced in the area since the discovery of the Red Hill gold mine in 1896 (adjacent to the Company’s historical Silver Lake nickel mine at Kambalda). The area immediately encompassing and surrounding the FBA produced gold from the 1920s onwards, but this new gold field came to real prominence in the early 1980s when WMC Resources Ltd commenced dedicated gold production from the Victory-Defiance Complex and the Hunt nickel mine near Kambalda.
The St Ives Gold Mine was sold by WMC to Gold Fields in December 2001 after 5.6Moz of gold had been produced. With an expanded exploration budget requisite with being one of the world’s top gold companies, Gold Fields has gone on to mine over 9.6Moz1 of gold itself and has found what is shaping to be the most significant discovery in the camp’s history, the Invincible gold deposit, suggesting that the biggest deposits are not always found first in the discovery cycle.
In light of the strong AUD gold price and the significant gold endowment surrounding its Foster-Baker project area, the Company is also now targeting high ranking gold targets with a view to fast tracking open pit development of any discovery whilst testing the deeper potential for St Ives style/sized deposits.
Lady Herial
The Lady Herial gold prospect is hosted in the Defiance Dolerite, a known favourable host for gold in the immediate vicinity of Foster Baker at the Victory-Defiance gold complex a few kilometres to the north.
High-grade quartz veins were mined in the 1920s by prospectors with gold ore won from these workings treated at either the nearby historical State Battery or the privately owned Ives Reward battery, the ruins of which are both located on what are now Lunnon Metals’ leases.
Lady Herial is an outcropping to very shallow, high-grade and thick gold deposit and was discovered by Lunnon Metals from its initial drilling at this prospect in February 2024. Hosted on granted mining leases with an abundance of infrastructure nearby (see Figure 1), the deposit is well positioned to exploit the current high A$ gold price environment. The breakdown of the MRE as at 7 May 2025 at a 0.5 g/t Au cut-off grade is as shown in Table below.
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Although the mineralised gold structures at Lady Herial remain open down plunge, the Company plans to permit and mine the deposit as quickly as possible. Accordingly, in parallel to the drilling campaigns, the Company has been progressing technical study and permitting activities to fast track approval of a modest sized and short mine life (4-6 months). These preliminary technical studies support the view that Lady Herial, in whole or in part, has robust prospects for economic extraction.
The Company has high confidence in the ability to advance Lady Herial quickly in the timeframe contemplated. Once the open pit receives regulatory approval, the development footprint will be cleared. The Company will then complete a further round of infill close spaced drilling to remove the need for grade control during subsequent operations, and will also plan drilling with the goal of upgrading and extending the Indicated and Inferred Resource category components prior to a final mining decision.
This first-time MRE at Lady Herial is another catalyst for the Company and acts as a springboard to fast track the deposit towards potential future production. This strategy aims to allow the Company to effectively self-fund its ongoing exploration program seeking to make significant gold discoveries from its portfolio of tenements in the heart of the multi-million ounce St Ives gold camp.
hustler
Originally discovered by the Company in 2021 during nickel drilling at the Foster mine, the Hustler structure was identified as being a potential cause for offset of some of the nickel shoots mined towards the end of production in the 1990s.
Recent results of 4.31m @ 8.69g/t Au including 1.05m @ 33.81g/t Au and 3.60m @ 5.15g/t Au including 2.30m @ 7.72g/t Au complement intersections on Hustler from 2021/22 which included 7.84m @ 1.5g/t Au and 7.54m @ 0.93g/t Au.
Past surface drilling campaigns by the Company at Hustler also recorded other gold hits on other structures, including Lady Herial, such as 3.59m @ 1.72 g/t Au and 0.3m @ 19.48 g/t Au (see ASX announcements dated 5 October 2021 and the December 2021 and March 2022 quarterly reports).
lunnon sediment (a father’s day vein analogue)
The Company highlights the potential for all the mineralised gold structures identified to date to interact with the regionally extensive, iron rich Lunnon Sediment. This same host rock records extreme high-grade gold mineralisation at the Beta/Hunt mine, owned and operated under sub-lease by TSX listed Karora Resources (previously RNC Minerals (TSX:RNC) (Karora). The Beta/Hunt nickel and gold mine, located less than 15km to the north of Foster-Baker, is in the same stratigraphic position as the Foster nickel mine and was run by WMC as a dual-commodity mine until the larger St Ives Gold operation was sold to Gold Fields Ltd in 2001.
Gold Fields sold the nickel rights under a sub-lease arrangement to Reliance Mining in 2003, and over the time the gold rights were also acquired with the sub-lease now held by Karora. Lunnon Metals’ executive management previously managed the gold exploration at Beta/Hunt when it was owned and operated by WMC and also later when under Gold Fields’ ownership. Indeed, the creation of the sub-lease and its divestment to Reliance Mining was managed by the Company’s Managing Director when still an executive with Gold Fields.
Thus, a significant host rock at Beta/Hunt, the Lunnon Sediment is also present at Foster, just as it is at Beta/Hunt, is typically found 80-120m into the footwall of the main nickel contact. The significance of this is twofold:
- Historical exploration by WMC for nickel typically stopped once the main nickel contact had been tested. That is, few, if any, drill holes tested deep enough to intersect the Lunnon Sediment, especially for gold. In essence, it was not until Karora followed the lower grade gold structures at the Beta/Hunt mine down dip into the Lunnon Sediment that its potential as an excellent host for high-grade and extreme-grade gold mineralisation was discovered. A new “Exploration Search Space” had been revealed.
- At the FBA the Lunnon Sediment again sits in the footwall of the main nickel contact, an area that even though it outcrops, was not tested for gold due to:
- Foster being a nickel mine, so there was limited to no gold focus, either at surface or underground;
- As above, nickel drilling typically stopped prior to reaching the Lunnon Sediment; and
- There was no precedent that the Lunnon Sediment was a valid host rock for gold.
In summary, the Lunnon Sediment sits along strike from all current high-priority gold prospects reported previously and in today’s announcement . As evidenced from publicly reported information by Karora together with the intimate personnel experience of Lunnon Metals’ own team, the Company considers that low-modest grade gold bearing structures have the potential to record a significant enhancement in grade when interaction with the iron rich Lunnon Sediment occurs. This opportunity will be factored into both the current surface exploration program for gold but also underground exploration in the future when the Foster nickel mine is re-started.
PLENTIFUL
The Plentiful gold prospect is associated with a strongly anomalous magnetic feature located approximately 1.0 km to the west of the Foster nickel mine. Interpreted to represent a magnetite rich dolerite intrusion, analogous to the lithology that hosts gold to the immediate north at Victory-Defiance and to the south at Argo, limited previous bedrock drilling recorded select, but widely spaced, anomalous gold results including 4.0m @ 1.97g/t Au in RC hole CD15427.
The current RC and DD program has confirmed the presence of gold and that the feature is indeed a magnetite rich, differentiated dolerite with well-developed granophyric zones, again, a key element to hosting gold in this part of the St Ives gold camp.
Significant intercepts recorded (above a 1.0 g/t Au cut-off) include:
6.0m @ 3.02g/t Au (PBS24RC_001 from 64m downhole)
2.0m @ 24.49g/t Au (PBS24RC_003 from 82m downhole)
3.0m @ 4.78g/t Au (PBS24RC_004 from 62m downhole)
2.20m @ 2.33g/t Au and 0.4m @ 4.94g/t Au (PBS24DD_002 from 86.4m and 91.1m)
PARINGA WEST
The gold prospect at Paringa West is marked by a north-south alignment of previously drilled (by Gold Fields), widely spaced, anomalous RC bedrock intercepts, interpreted to be hosted in the Upper Paringa Basalts (the same stratigraphic units that host the Hamlet and Athena deposits on Gold Fields leases to the immediate south). Lunnon Metals’ drilling has successfully intercepted the targeted position with a range of results, from no significant assays (“nsa”) to lower grade anomalous and significant intercepts above a 1.0 g/t Au cut-off, including:
1.0m @ 2.05g/t Au (PBS24RC_007 from 23m downhole)
1.0m @ 2.94g/t Au (PBS24RC_007 from 44m downhole)
4.0m @ 2.01g/t Au (PBS24RC_007 from 89m downhole)
The results received to date indicate that the initial interpretation of a north-south trend may in fact comprise multiple mineralised structures and/or shoots that cut across the trend at an oblique angle with a steep westerly dip. Investigations will continue in this regard. Results from three Lunnon Metals RC holes and one DD hole are still pending.
managing director, edmund ainscough:
“The beauty of Kambalda is that it hosts world-class nickel and gold camps. 1.6Mt of nickel metal and over 15Moz of gold has been mined since the 1960s and 1980s respectively . Basically, anything is possible and the discovery opportunity for both metals is exciting. Remember, we found Baker, some 33,700t of metal at over 3.3% Ni grade in the top few hundred metres below surface surrounded by historical 100m x 100m spaced drilling by WMC that had missed the high-grade!
There is an array of different sized gold deposits on our immediate doorstep at Foster-Baker, from massive (>3.5Moz at both Victory and Argo-Athena-Hamlet) to modest and small. This is the perfect back drop to our gold program and to say we are pleased with the results from the first pass test of six prospects is an understatement. We will definitely be taking Plentiful forward as soon as possible and Lady Herial and Hustlers sit immediately adjacent to our Foster nickel mine and the 56,800t of nickel metal hosted there in Mineral Resource3.
Kambalda is the ideal place to execute a dual nickel and gold focus, noting that WMC operated just such a combined business at Kambalda from the 1980s right through to 2001 and our neighbours at Beta/Hunt (WGX: Westgold Resources Ltd) also benefit from exposure to both metals.”
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