And while it feels like a new antimony project comes out of the woodwork each week, Thunderbird Resources’ newly-acquired Rockvale project in New South Wales looks like it could be the real deal.

Last week, Thunderbird picked up the Rockvale project comprising 488sqkm of ground surrounding the most advanced antimony project on the ASX, Larvotto Resources’ Hillgrove gold-antimony project.

“Nothing beats being in the shadow of a headframe and when you look at how close we are to Hillgrove – we actually surround their tenement package, and we’re along strike from their mineralisation, so we just saw this as being an enormous opportunity,” Thunderbird executive chairman George Bauk said this week.

Hillgrove has a resource of 7.2 million tonnes at 4.7 grams per tonne gold and 1.3% antimony for 1 million ounces of gold and 93,000t of antimony, making it the eighth-largest deposit in the world.

“Many of those other [projects] are in China, Russia, Tajikistan, so when you take those regions out, this is literally one of the best projects in the world,” Bauk said of Hillgrove.

In August, Larvotto completed a prefeasibility study for Hillgrove, which outlined a A$73 million project targeting 80,000oz of gold equivalent and generating a post-tax net present value of A$157 million and internal rate of return of 50%.

The reason capex is so low is due to the project’s extensive existing surface and underground infrastructure and allows Larvotto to target first ore by early 2026.

Rockvale

Thunderbird agreed to pay vendor Kooky Resources A$150,000 cash and issue 30 million shares upfront, while a further 20 million shares may be issued as deferred consideration in the future if the company achieves certain project milestones.

The project has up to 130 years of old workings and previous sampling has returned grades of up to 18.2% antimony and 76g/t gold, results Bauk described as “absolutely sensational”.

Bauk said there was an enormous amount of historical data to work through.

“Our team will be working through a really detailed historical compilation of all the data on our tenements to really get a better understanding of what the potential is in this area,” he said.

“We’ll be identifying high priority targets for initial on-ground work, which will include mapping, rock chip and soil sampling, coupled with detailed drone aeromagnetics, so when we can pull all that together, I’m sure we’re going to have an enormous amount of targets that we will want to start drilling as soon as practically possible.”

Bauk said the company was aiming to be drilling at Rockvale within the next six months.

The acquisition also included the Kookaburra gold project, 50km north of Hillgrove, which covers multiple gold reefs in the historical high-grade Kookabookra gold field.

Uranium

Bauk said the addition of a gold-antimony project complemented Thunderbird’s existing uranium portfolio in Canada and copper assets in Peru.

As well as gaining exposure to another hot commodity, the addition of NSW assets also allows Thunderbird to conduct field activities when the Canadian projects are inaccessible during winter.

“We’re still big believers in uranium, and we feel like we’ve got an outstanding portfolio of uranium projects in the Athabasca Basin,” Bauk said.

“It’s fair to say that the Athabasca basin has the highest grade deposits in the world, and with the likes of Cameco, they’ve got the best deposits in the world in terms of high grades and we’ve seen the emergence of NexGen with their outstanding project, which was only discovered 10 years ago, and this is a really important part of the world for uranium production.”

Thunderbird’s flagship uranium asset is Hidden Bay, on the eastern edge of Athabasca Basin, along strike from the producing Rabbit Lake mine.

The company completed a drilling program there in September and is awaiting assays.

“What we found in that uranium exploration program, we hit a couple of alterations, which is really critical in the search for uranium,” Bauk said.

“We found low mineralisation, which is exciting, and so we really believe there’s a need for a follow up program at the Hidden Bay project.”

Thunderbird will also reinterpret results from an airborne survey at its Cluff Lake project, which is along trend from UEX/Orano’s Shea Creek uranium deposit.

It is awaiting results from an airborne survey at the Surprise Creek uranium-copper project, ahead of diamond drilling in 2025.

“We would hope for that to be out before the end of the year, so that we can show the market what the excitement is, both for the uranium potential at Surprise Creek, coupled with the copper potential,” Bauk said.

Another catalyst is exploration success by Firetail Resources, in which Thunderbird holds 4.9%, which is drilling for high-grade copper in Canada.

Thunderbird had just under A$2.5 million cash at September 30 and Bauk said the current quarter would be a low cash burn period.