OVERVIEW
Artemis Resources advances Carlow Castle and Armada assets amid big finds by neighbours
08:29 07 Mar 2019
The company is now chaired by Dubai royal, His Highness Sheikh Maktoum Hasher al Maktoum, a Commercial Bank of Dubai board member.
Exploration in the Pilbara is Artemis' forte
Artemis Resources Ltd (ASX:ARV) (FRA:ATY) (OTC:ARTFF) has progressed its flagship Carlow Castle Gold-Copper-Cobalt Project in the West Pilbara region of Western Australia this year with a 71% resource upgrade.
The JORC resource upgrade puts the inferred resource at 7.7 million tonnes grading 1.06 g/t gold, 0.51% copper and 0.08% cobalt.
This quarter, the company has also undergone a board and management-level restructure and been granted a tenement for its Armada prospect in the East Pilbara district near Greatland Gold plc's (LON:GGP) now famed Havieron project.
Greatland’s prize intersection from the Paterson province project featured 275 metres grading 4.77 g/t gold and 0.61% copper.
Havieron’s discovery is just 30 kilometres from Newcrest Mining Limited’s (ASX:NCM) (FRA:NMA) (OTCMKTS:NCMGF) 27 million ounce Telfer gold mine.
READ: Artemis Resources boosts Carlow Castle JORC resource by 71%
Artemis has a JV with Novo Resources Corp (CVE:NVO) and plans to use its Radio Hill plant near Karratha for processing material from its projects, including Carlow Castle and the 605-square kilometre Armada prospect on Paterson Range.
Eight exploration targets have been identified at Armada with an airborne magnetic survey.
Armada is also near big miner Rio Tinto Limited (ASX:RIO) (LON:RIO) (NYSE:RIO) (OTCMKTS:RTNTF) which shared details of its own major copper discovery at Winu project iast week.
Rio's best intersections at Winu included 104 metres grading 0.8% copper, 0.28 g/t gold and 4.35 g/t silver.
Metalicity Ltd (ASX:MCT) is another company on the range securing tenure in light of recent big discoveries.
Carlow Castle is Artemis' flagship project and the company believes it is amenable to gold, copper and cobalt conventional processing.
Artemis chief executive officer Wayne Bramwell said last month: “Artemis is encouraged by the amenability of the deposit to conventional processing options and the excellent recoveries of the three key minerals.
“Gold and high-grade copper concentrates will be the primary value drivers at Carlow Castle with cobalt representing a third and valuable product stream that should appeal to many potential offtake partners.”
The company has undergone a number of key people changes as it restructured its board and senior management.
David Lenigas resigned as a director and executive chairman to focus on family and other business interests, vacating his seat at the boardroom table for new chairman, His Highness Sheikh Maktoum Hasher al Maktoum.
The Dubai royal family member is president of Al Fajer Group, chairman of Dubai International Holdings, chairman of Manannan Hydro Limited and a board member of Commercial Bank of Dubai.
Al Maktoum has since upped his stake in Artemis to 10.15 million shares.
Director Alex Duncan-Kemp also resigned as a director and was replaced by Minerva Corporate commercial director Dan Smith who is a non-executive director of Europa Metals Ltd (ASX:EUZ), Lachlan Star Ltd (ASX:LSA), HIPO Resources Ltd (ASX:HIP) and White Cliff Minerals Ltd (ASX:WCN).
Artemis describes itself as the “first West Pilbara company to consolidate a significant portfolio of base, battery and precious metal assets with a strategically-located processing plant”.
It has 2,400 square kilometres of “the Pilbara’s best gold, base and battery tenure”.
The company hopes to adopt an adaptive strategy as it aims to be a producer with a long life.
Artemis' corporate strategy is to “be nimble corporately, explore aggressively and systematically advance our mineral resources to support the transformation of our 100%-owned Radio Hill operation into a long-term producer of gold, base and battery metal concentrates.”
The company’s Armada exploration and Carlow Castle resource upgrade and preliminary metallurgical work have been bankrolled with $5.4 million of funding from UK-based institutional group Riverfort Global Capital Limited.
At Artemis' Armada prospect, which is about 1,280 kilometres north-northeast of Perth, O’Callaghan’s tungsten-copper deposit and Metals X Limited's (ASX:MLX) Nifty Copper Mine are also in the neighbourhood.
Artemis executive director Ed Mead reported in January: “The latest airborne survey undertaken by Artemis has identified a large number of very prospective exploration targets surrounding Havieron, with the Kzinti target as close as only 2.5 kilometres away and on the Greatland/Artemis tenement boundary.
“Artemis surrounds Havieron on three sides and right now we see this project as one of the most exciting in the company’s extensive Pilbara tenement portfolio.”
Then speaking to Proactive Investors’ Stocktube video channel, Mead said “Armada’s prospect is a very exciting project."
“We’ve just completed some airborne magnetic data, and from that we’ve got an initial eight targets, and we’re in the process now of completing further processing and version models.”
Mead also updated investors on the company’s pipeline.
Artemis’ focus includes Radio Hill in WA’s West Pilbara region, a wholly-owned project that consists of a mine and a shuttered plant, which the company hopes to reopen.
The flagship Carlow Castle project is another priority for the company which has described it as “the best scalable gold-copper-cobalt deposit in Australia”.
Mead told Stocktube: “Over a period of time we’ve managed to secure some quite exciting projects.
“We’ve got a number of very exciting early-stage gold projects, but we’ve also got Carlow Castle which is … a great gold, copper and cobalt project.
“And on the back of that, we’ve got ... pegging ground in the Paterson’s Range last year.”
Radio Hill facility is a 0.5 million tonne gold and base metal concentrator 30 kilometres from the Pilbara centre of Karratha.
The West Pilbara facility is the only plant in the Karratha area, and Artemis is at the permitting stage in its bid to reopen the plant.
West Perth-based Artemis released a new JORC resource for the 100%-owned Radio Hill mine last month.
Found in a shallow upper portion, the new nickel-copper-cobalt resource was in the indicated resource and featured 1.15 million tonnes grading 0.52% nickel, 0.73% copper and 277ppm cobalt.
The new resource is about 400 metres from Radio Hill plant.
Mead told the market in December 2018: “Further resource development work is required to determine the optimum means to monetise the project and this work will be reviewed in 2019.”