Austral begins ambitious North West drill program

Austral expects to be producing 10,000tpa of copper cathode, 80km north of Mount Isa, from mid-2022, enabling self-funding of exploration and development activities.

Austral told the ASX it was starting a 12,650m drill program at Lady Annie and Lady Colleen as they advance on multiple exploration and development fronts with a $10 million drilling budget for the next 12 months.

Steve Tambanis, Austral's Chief Executive Officer said they listed late last year with a large JORC Mineral Resource Estimate of 420,000t of contained copper, a new mine development at Anthill and an operating oxide processing plant.

"The first 40,000t of copper cathode are being mined and processed from our new Anthill Mine," Mr Tambanis said.

"This provides strong cashflows over the next four years and is effectively the springboard and financial support for our intensive exploration and development activities."

Mr Tambanis said they had commenced drilling programs to discover additional oxide ore feed for their plant.

"Lady Colleen, Dividend and Lady Annie are amongst our first prospects for evaluation with more to come as the drill rig completes each first pass program," he said.

"Our sulphide prospects have excellent short-term upside. Lady Colleen's 5.6Mt @0.89%Cu sulphide Mineral Resource Estimate is being re-assessed to determine its potential for a lower tonnage, higher grade resource that could be open pit mined and trucked to a nearby sulphide concentrator".

Mr Tambanis said they were also commencing metallurgical test work to see if sulphide mineralisation is amenable to processing on their heap leach by utilising a new processing technology.

"In addition, we are drilling to increase the Lady Colleen resource where we have identified the potential for extensions to mineralisation," he said.

"Our SXEW ((solvent extraction-electrowinning) plant has considerable spare capacity. We will conduct similar evaluations for Flying Horse, Lady Annie and Mt Clarke."

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Mr Tambanis said Austral's intention was never to operate a mine for four years and then shut down.

"Our ambition is to extend mine life through discoveries, commercialise our current resources and significantly build upon our current resource inventories. We have a pathway to do so with funding and a large strategic landholding in the Mt Isa Inlier with demonstrated copper fertility," he said.

"It's great to be one of a few copper producers in Australia. It's even better to have a strongly increasing production profile in the current high copper price environment. We look forward to providing regular updates as we rapidly build copper production from Anthill and scale-up exploration and development activities to extend mine life."

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