Proactive - Interviews for investors

QMines fields high-grade copper at Develin Creek's Scorpion Prospect

QMines Ltd (ASX: QML) executive chairman Andrew Sparke joins Proactive’s Tylah Tully to discuss results from a maiden drilling program at the Develin Creek project approximately 90 kilometres northwest of Rockhampton in Queensland. QMines completed 36 drill holes for 4,227 metres at the Scorpion deposit yielding significant intersections, including 26 metres at 1.38% copper, 0.29 g/t gold, 11 g/t silver and 1.99% zinc, and 23 metres at 1.57% copper, 0.42 g/t gold, 20 g/t silver and 2.77% zinc. Results confirm Scorpion as a shallow, high-grade VHMS deposit, supporting the potential to extend the mine life at the Mt Chalmers copper operation. The Develin Creek project was fully acquired in September 2024, with recent metallurgical test-work demonstrating excellent recoveries for copper and gold. Current drilling focuses on upgrading inferred resources to indicated and measured categories and identifying deposit extensions. A September 2023 resource estimate outlined 3.2 million tonnes at 1.05% copper, 1.22% zinc, 0.17 g/t gold and 5.9 g/t silver with 53% in the inferred category. Drilling at the Window prospect, south of Scorpion, suggests the deposit remains open to the south and west. QMines anticipates continued operations despite seasonal weather and plans to provide an updated resource estimate upon completing the program. The Scorpion and Window prospects demonstrate significant growth potential. #ProactiveInvestors #QMines #ASX #MiningNews, #CopperExploration, #ZincMining, #GoldDrilling, #ExplorationResults, #ResourceEstimate, #QueenslandMining, #BaseMetals, #ASXUpdates, #DrillingResults, #MiningProjects, #MtChalmers, #ScorpionDeposit, #MineralExploration, #CopperZinc, #Metallurgy, #Geology, #ResourceExpansion, #VHMS, #MiningAustralia

Duration:: 4m
Broadcast on:: 28 Nov 2024
Audio Format:: other

Hello, and welcome back to the Pro-Active Studio. I'm Tyler Tully and today I'm joined by QMINE's Executive Chairman, Andrew Spark, who's going to talk us through the next round of results the company's release from its made and drilling program at the Devil and Creek Project in Queensland. Andrew, thanks for joining us today. Thanks for having me, Tyler. So, talk to us about this program. Where are you at now and run us through the recent highlights? Oh, look, this is a bit of an exciting day for us and our shareholders. Just give you a bit of context. We bought a very high-grade copper and zinc asset near our Mount Charmers mine in Central Queensland. We finished that acquisition a couple of months ago. And so this is our made and drilling program at one of three deposits, three high-grade deposits or copper deposits at this new project. The first one we've been drilling is a deposit called Skorpion. And my God, we've come out with some absolute rippers today, some ripper results. So you can see I'm quite excited about it. You know, this has been a culmination of a lot of work by the team. But, yeah, today we're announcing the first 36 drill results for the program. We will continue to drill as long as the wet season allows us. So it's going to continue from here. We expect a lot of more great news flow coming into Christmas, which is brilliant. Sorry, let's get more into Skorpion now. The results sound really encouraging. What do you know about the deposit at this stage? Yeah, fantastic. Look, there's three deposits here and Skorpion is the shallow of the three. So we've started with Skorpion because we're really trying to focus on high-grade, shallow open pitiful material. And that's a really key point of difference between us and a lot of other copper producers or developers, in that we really want to build a business plan around low-cost, shallow, high-grade, open pitiful material that just generates really strong returns for our shareholders. So Skorpion is exactly that. It's sort of outcropping its surface down to about 150 metres, is the existing resource. So it's a really shallow mineralisation and really high-grade in both copper and zinc. So it's got a really strong zinc by product here, but also some really good precious metals credits as well. So gold and silver. So the predominant mineral here is copper though. And so a lot of these results today really showed off the growth of this deposit, which is brilliant. So the overall lane here is to try and grow the mine plan at Mount Chalmers, which is about 90 Ks away. And so what we're basically doing is drilling out another five deposits around the old mine and really trying to grow the scale of our Mount Chalmers operation. So you've sort of just touched on it, but where do you go from here? What are the next steps? Yeah, sorry, I jumped in there a bit. But yeah, I think for us, obviously we've got some more drilling results into Christmas and into the new year. We will do a resource upgrade at Skorpion first, giving we drill that first. Then we'll do some what we call a pit optimisation study where we'll try and assess what it all means for a larger Mount Chalmers operation. And then that will lead into an updated pre-feasibility study at some point mid-next year. So it's all about trying to grow the mine plan here. Obviously after we finished drilling at Skorpion, we'll move to the next deposit, which is called Softbide City, which is literally within a kilometre of this deposit, so very close. And then we've got a series of other deposits we want to drill out over the course of next year. So we have one of the best growth profiles and I know a bit biased of course, but I really genuinely believe we've got one of the best growth profiles of the copper developers out there. So it's not subject to that normal exploration risk because we're, I suppose, in field drilling and extending known deposits, which is great, so a really key point of difference for our shareholders. It definitely sounds like really exciting times for the company and there's a lot of news flow that investors can look forward to. Yeah, absolutely. We're really big on that. We know we've got to keep running engaged. So this is obviously a great result for us being our main drilling program, but as you can see, there's only a small number of holes delivered today. There's a lot more on the way, which is brilliant. So, yeah, watch this space. Thanks for joining us today, Andrew. Thanks very much for your time.