It’s been an interesting ride for Kin and its shareholders. The past 6-7 years has seen a botched attempt to get into production, board unrest, a knocked back takeover offer and interference in another deal.

Geologist Leah Moore, who is also president of the Australian Institute of Geoscientists, joined Kin 18 months ago from Bellevue Gold and admits her time at the company hasn’t all been smooth sailing.

“This opportunity came up to step up, and at that point when I interviewed at Kin, they had a A$20 million exploration budget,” she said.

That cash was eventually spent buying shares in Genesis Minerals takeover target Dacian Gold to get a seat at the table during the consolidation of the Leonora gold district.

While that strategy eventually paid off, netting Kin a tidy profit on its investment, it left Moore with no team or money and little to do.

Former managing director Andrew Munckton quit in July last year and Rowan Johnston, who also chairs gold market favourite Spartan Resources, was appointed as executive chairman.

“Even though it’s sad that Andrew left, it gave us an opportunity to re-shift the focus and Rowan has been excellent,” Moore said.

Weaving some magic

There’s been some pretty heavy news flow from Kin since December, when it announced the sale of several Cardinia gold deposits to Genesis Minerals for A$15 million in cash and 21.9 million shares.

The shares are currently worth A$73 million, compared to Kin’s market capitalisation of A$85 million.

It puts Kin in an enviable position to continue to advance the Cardinia deposits it held onto, which host resources of 932,000 ounces of gold.

However, gold might not be all that’s there.

Moore recognised the potential for volcanogenic massive sulphide (VMS) mineralisation at Cardinia.

In January, Kin announced that re-logging of a 2022 diamond hole seeking gold at the Albus target returned 5.7m at 5.3% zinc, 0.34% copper, 0.3% lead, 40 parts per million silver and 1ppm gold from 270.3m down-hole, including 0.7m at 10% zinc and 77ppm silver.

Portable XRF analysis returned value of up to 21.9% zinc.

Moore said Kin had been so focused on finding gold that the company had the blinkers on to other things.

“But you just need something to crack that open and then it opens up your whole world,” she said.

Mapping and geochemistry has confirmed the VMS potential of the entire project.

“We’ve just scratched the surface,” Moore said.

“And even if this Albus target isn’t a big VMS deposit, which, in exploration, these things, they don’t always become giant things.

“But there’s so much ground to cover, and all of the data that we have so far suggests that there’s a lot of hotspots and that data is just from our current drilling and where we’ve done sampling.

“The next step is to explore under cover, which we don’t have a lot of data for, but all of these horizons, they’re continuous from north to south and it’s 40km of strike.”

Moore and her team have identified some strong targets to test later this year.

“Now we’ve got all this exciting geology work we need to do and money, so we’re just building the team up,” she said.

Further opportunities

Given Kin now has a healthy cash balance, it is also looking for other opportunities.

It proposed a merger with PNX Metals, where Johnston and fellow Kin director Hansjoerg Plaggemars are also directors.

Discussions are ongoing, while Kin is also talking to other companies.

Moore said the strategy was to advance the VMS discovery and continue to grow gold resources at Cardinia.

“But also to go shopping, essentially, and see where we can add value to other projects at a reasonable price.”

A bit of wizardry

Kin is also planning to rebrand and has selected the name Patronus Resources, a reference to Harry Potter.

According to Wizarding World, the patronus “is a form of advanced magic which even the most qualified wizards can struggle with” – which sounds a lot like geology.

“We’ve got a new energy about us and Patronus gives a lot of options in terms where we go as a company,” Moore said.

Albus is also a Harry Potter reference, being the first name of Professor Dumbledore.

Moore said the rebrand was about restoring market trust.

“We’re genuine and we believe in what we’re doing,” she said.

“We’re trying to shake off the shackles a bit and emerge as a new energetic team and generate genuine value for people, do some cool things and discover stuff along the way, hopefully.”