Tartana Copper/Gold/Zinc Projects

Our flagship project is located approximately 150 km west of Cairns and 40 km northwest of Chillagoe along the Burke Development Road (see below).

The project area lies within the prospective northwest trending Chillagoe Formation belt within the Palmerville Fault zone. The Palmerville fault is interpreted as a low angle thrust dipping shallowly northeast under the Chillagoe Formation sediments. The sediments in the hanging wall are considered to be a package of shallow to deep water sediments thrust together and separated by listric faults arising in the Palmerville Thrust. This zone hosts major porphyry and skarn related deposits including the Red Dome porphyry copper-gold skarn, the Mungana porphyry copper-gold-zinc-lead deposit, the King Vol high grade zinc skarn deposit and numerous smaller deposits along the belt.

Queen Grade Zinc Project

Within the Tartana mining leases the Queen Grade zinc project occurs on a parallel ridge to the King Vol zinc mine 800 metres further west and which is owned by Auctus Resources. The zinc mineralisation is interpreted as skarn mineralisation related to potential copper porphyry mineralisation nearby at depth.

The Queen Grade project is marked at surface by at least three significant gossanous brecciated lenses within silicified siltstone that are parallel to bedding and dip steeply southwest. The gossans are surrounded by silica–sericite alteration of the host rock, which results in a prominent northwest striking ridge. A limestone unit, which is silicified at the contact with the siltstone, is located immediately to the southwest. The silica–sericite alteration extends over a strike length of 1.9 km through ML 4820 and ML 5312. The gossanous breccia outcrops have strike lengths of 30–100 m.

There have been a number drilling programmes conducted by various explorers in the past with highlights including:

• TDH 15 - 33m @ 12 % Zn
• TDH 22 - 6m @ 12.8% Zn
• NARC 17 - 60m @ 3.7% Zn including 14m @ 7.7% Zn

Previous deepest drillhole intersection is only 130m below surface compared to King Vol mineralisation which extends to over 900m

Tartana metallurgical testwork has been encouraging and indicates >98% recovery to 42% Zn concentrate from initial rougher flotation work

Tartana has drilled in the 2H CY2022 to test for depth extensions to the mineralisation. Drillhole TDH 24 was successful and reported 12 m at 10.7% Zn (see ASX announcement dated 21 October 2022). Further drilling has been peripheral to this intersection and is awaiting assay resources. The Company is planning to issue a maiden JORC 2012 resource within the next few weeks.

Primary copper mineralisation within the open pit

• Tartana open pit mineralisation has been extensively drilled with more than 68 drillholes into the copper mineralisation associated with the open pit out of a total of 152 drillholes across the mining leases.
• The oxide copper mineralisation is close to surface and represents the upper portions of copper sulphide mineralisation at depth. The oxide copper mineralisation is to be used for the copper sulphate production.
• We are targeting deeper copper sulphide mineralisation for a more conventional plant to produce copper in concentrate, and which will be an independent project from the copper sulphate production.
• Drilling in 2H CY2021 tested two significant IP targets to the east of the open pit mineralisation. While intersecting extensive low grade copper mineralisation, it has refocused our targeting to the west of the pit as well as at depth below the pit. This drilling demonstrated mineralisation extends for more than 450 m below the surface of the pit (see below).

The Company reported shallow primary copper resource of 10,825 tonne of contained Cu to 20 to 40 m depths below the base of the open pit (see ASX announcement dated 21 September 2022) and is currently extending this estimation to approximately 100 metres depth (see Table below). Please put resource table here

These resources form part of the earlier estimate Exploration Target defined below.
Note: The potential quantity and grade is conceptual in nature, and there has been insufficient exploration to estimate a Mineral Resource and it is uncertain if further exploration will result in the estimation of a Mineral Resource. JORC 2012 Sections 1, 2 & 3 and drilling data are presented in the ASX announcement dated 28 January 2022.

These resources form part of the earlier estimate Exploration Target defined below.
Note: The potential quantity and grade is conceptual in nature, and there has been insufficient exploration to estimate a Mineral Resource and it is uncertain if further exploration will result in the estimation of a Mineral Resource. JORC 2012 Sections 1, 2 & 3 and drilling data are presented in the ASX announcement dated 28 January 2022.

The Tartana Copper and Zinc Project comprises four granted mining leases (ML 4819, ML 4820, ML 5312 and ML 20489) which define the project area (see below).

Historically, copper mineralisation has been reported at Tartana Hill where small scale mining has occurred in the past as well as elsewhere across our leases. Separately, zinc mineralisation is present in the Queen Grade project within our mining leases, and has similarities with the zinc mineralisation in the King Vol Zinc Project which has been developed by Auctus Resources on the neighbouring leases.

We have defined three separate projects within the four mining leases and these are;
1. Primary copper mineralisation within the open pit,
2. Queen Grade Zinc Project
3. Valentino Copper/Gold/Silver/Cobalt Prospect.
These projects are separate to the Heap Leach – Solvent Extraction – Crystallisation project described in Advanced Projects. This project involves refurbishing the existing plant and source copper from local and regional oxide copper sources.