Excalibur

The quest to become a significant gold producer

When you acquire a suite of assets that were formally two of the richest gold mines in Australia, in an area that was Australia’s third largest gold producing region, the results are bound to be very interesting. That is just what Excalibur Mining Corporation Ltd, of Perth, Western Australia, did in 2005 with its current Tennant Creek Portfolio.

Tennant Creek, situated in the Northern Territory, is known for its high grade gold ore bodies. Plans to restart mining in the area are well advanced with four companies actively exploring. IRJ spoke with Tim Lagdon, Excalibur’s Managing Director, about the company’s big plans for Tennant Creek and beyond as the company continues on its quest to become a significant gold producer.

Excalibur exploration begins

Lagdon explains that subsequent to Excalibur’s acquisition of its Tennant Creek portfolio, back in 2005, the company embarked upon an exploration programme to fully test and expand those assets. This has continued ever since.

“In 2007, Excalibur started re-evaluating its ground after it raised a significant amount of money and commenced drilling on its shallow open pitable deposits and doing new resource calculations. But it wasn’t until June last year that there was a change in management and new members of the board joined and there was a concerted effort to take the company from exploration to development mode,” Lagdon says.

Excalibur plans to re-open two famous gold mines, both at Tennant Creek; Juno and Nobles Nob. Juno produced over 800,000 ounces of gold at an incredible grade of nearly two ounces per tonne. Nobles Nob, as an underground mine produced a similar amount at an equally spectacular grade of 48g/t, before a crown pillar collapse in 1965 turned it into one of Australia’s first open pit gold mines; an impressive history. Both mines have been closed for around 30 years.  The mines are located just five kilometres apart and Lagdon explains that with this in mind, Excalibur looks to re-develop them as one project with a single processing plant.

“Our primary focus at the moment is on Tennant Creek and what we’re doing there is proofing our assets. We’re going through a process of systematically reviewing on a robust basis all of our Tenant Creek assets to get them to a stage where there can be sufficient confidence to move into a development mode,” Lagdon says.

“That includes getting an independent review from a specialist geo-science group, Cube Consulting, of all our resources. We’re expecting to put out a new resource statement in a couple of months, which would bring together all of the historical drilling that has been done, as well as Excalibur’s drilling over the last two years.”

Excalibur’s other core focus project is entirely different.

“500 kilometres away in the Tanami region we have an exciting greenfields exploration project at a place called Browns Range,” Lagdon says.

This highly prospective project is scheduled for drilling over the next couple of months. It is a geological unconformity with favourable radiometrics which Excalibur considers prospective for gold, platinum, palladium and potentially uranium, but it also adds another dynamic to Excalibur as a whole which allows them to stand out from many other explorers.

“I think it’s a balance of progressed exploration at Tennant Creek—a proven production tenement package that’s known for high grade with low risk exploration—combined with exciting greenfields exploration for a large size deposit in the Tanami area,” Lagdon says.

With Excalibur’s expert management and board team, ranging from geology, stock broking through to mining engineers, banking and a resource analyst, it appears that both projects are in good hands.

Edging Excalibur into a development mode

Looking more closely at Tennant Creek, it is clear to see why this project is Excalibur’s primary focus as the company pursues its new resource statement within the next two months.

“From there we’ll be doing an evaluation of development options and making an assessment of whether we’ve got sufficient resources in the current inventory to take us into development mode,” Lagdon says.

“Concurrently, we have an exploration assessment program which is reviewing all of our targets at Tennant Creek to determine which of those targets have sufficient scale to further build our resource inventory.”

Lagdon says that Excalibur has got very prospective ground and it’s essentially a case of choosing where to drill out.

“Is it around Juno? Is it under the Nobles Nob pit? Is it in some of the satellite areas around Nobles Nob? It’s really a case of ranking and prioritising the targets and planning an exploration program for each of them,” he explains.

“We have already lodged a Notice of Intent with the Northern Territory government as to our plans to develop the project. From that the NT Government will make an assessment of the level of environmental work that we need to do in order to complete the permitting process.”

As Excalibur carries on its work to become a junior gold miner with, as Lagdon stresses, “a well-defined resource with proven economics,” it appears that these assets are in capable and expert hands. Plans are in place and progressing well, and it looks as though it won’t be long before we see another new gold mine out there at Tennant Creek.

www.excaliburmining.com.au

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