08 March 2024
MiningNews - Antipa Gearing Up Exploration on its "Big Bet" in Fertile Paterson Province
Air core drilling has returned well-regarded Antipa Minerals "a number of significant, very near surface, gold intersections" at its flagship Minyari Dome gold-copper project near Newmont's Telfer mine in the Paterson Province of Western Australia.
The results from the second phase of the drilling programme have increased the footprint of the GEO-O1 prospect by 100m to 700m, with an intercept of 1m at 4.3 grams per tonne of gold.
True widths are unknown at this early stage.
Antipa's managing director, Roger Mason, said the results have also pointed to three new gold targets.
Drilling in 2024
The company will now undertake a planned 11,000m RC (6000) and diamond core (5000m) drilling programme that's due to start at the end of the month.
The diamond core drill testing will be done on three large-scale greenfield targets and is supported by A$660,000 of further Exploration Incentive Scheme co-funding drilling grants.
The project
An updated 2022 mineral resource estimate for Antipa's Minyari Dome project showed 1.8 million ounces of gold, 64,300 tonnes of copper, 584,000oz of silver, and 11,100 tonnes of cobalt.
A scoping study for the project included a post-tax NPV (7%) of $278 million and 29% IRR (at US$1750/oz gold) and a post-tax payback of about two-and-a-half years from first production.
Pre-production capital cost stood at $275 million for a total initial gold output of 975,000oz, with an average of 170,000ozpa for the first five years.
The project is about 35km north of Newmont's Telfer mine and 22Mtpa processing facility. It is also 75km south of Rio Tinto's Winu copper-gold-silver development project and 28km north of Newmont-Greatland's Havieron gold-copper development.
Other projects
Along with Minyari Dome, Antipa has growth projects, including what Resolve Research described on February 7 as the "awe-inspiring" joint venture/ farm-in exploration projects being advanced by majors Rio Tinto, IGO, and Newmont as part of the Paterson Project.
‘A developing success story'
Resolve called Antipa a "developing success story" resulting from the "big bet" management took in 2010-14 on the then "relatively neglected Paterson Province".
The company began the year with $6.2 million in cash and zero debt.
Cavendish Securities noted on February 1 that Antipa spent about $4 million on exploration activities (including expenditure on behalf of farm-in parties) in the December quarter and has about 299 million unlisted options on issue with an exercise price of 2c or less. If exercised, these options can raise about $6 million.
Share price falls 7%
The latest results didn't seem to inspire shareholders, with the stock dropping by 7% in early trade to 1.3c, capitalising the company at $58 million. It has moved in a 52-week range of 1.1-2.3c.
Last month, Resolve had a price target of 7.6c for the stock.
Cavendish said in February, "We value Antipa at 5c on a sum-of-the-parts basis, underpinned by a solid asset on the development path, all with discovery upside rerating potential and with the potential M&A exits".
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