The copper price is back in record territory but the red metal was sadly lacking in company representation at Diggers & Dealers.

Having said that, a polished presentation by FireFly Metals (ASX:FFM) chief executive Darren Cooke on the company’s Green Bay copper-gold project in Newfoundland more than made up for D & D’s copper shortcoming.

FireFly acquired Green Bay in October 2023 when it was a $70 million company. It is now a $1.45 billion company, having risen 8 per cent this week alone in response to copper price strength and interest generated by Cookie’s D & D presentation.

Since acquisition, Green Bay’s resource base has grown to 80Mt at more than 2% copper.

With zones of 5% copper, Green Bay stands apart from the wall of low-grade copper deposits hoping to get into production on the back of record copper prices, as well as standing apart from the capital-intensive porphyry deposits in the Andes which the major mining companies need to chase to achieve scale.

“I’ve said this in a number of presentations that I’ve given, but I don’t think there have been intersections like this in the copper space (up to 13.2% copper equivalent in recent drilling) anywhere on the ASX since DeGrussa was discovered (2009) by Sandfire (ASX:SFR), and we know that was a company-making asset for those guys, and we feel similarly that this is going to be a company making asset for FireFly,” Cookie said.

Apart from the globally-significant grade, Cookie pointed out that unlike a lot of other copper deposits, Green Bay has a pathway to very rapid near-term copper production thanks to the underground development that took place under previous ownership and its easy access to a port.

“We will be producing copper, likely within the next three years,” Cookie said.

Green Bay moves into development mode at the end of the month with the planned release of an economics study which will incorporate an updated mineral resource estimate.

The economic study will bring a sharper focus to the FireFly value proposition going forward.

Cookie did not let any cats out of the bag on what the economic study would contain other than saying it would be looking at a 1.8mtpa mining and processing operation with higher rates likely to be canvassed.

But what he did note was that in April this year Canada’s Eldorado Gold Corp acquired fellow Canadian company Foran Mining Corp for C$3.8 billion (A$3.85bn). Foran was developing its McIlveena copper-zinc-gold project in Saskatchewan at a cost of C$1.08 billion.

McIlveena has half the resource base of the still-growing Green Bay and subject to confirmation in FireFly’s scoping study, it will be a much smaller producer than Green Bay.

It is an interesting comparison for the $1.45 billion FireFly and no doubt places the company on the M & A radar for the big miners looking to lock in copper growth.

BENZ MINING (ASX:BNZ):

Last week’s suggestion that Benz Mining (ASX:BNZ) could well emerge as the belle of the ball at the Diggers proved to be on the mark.

Benz was a $3.45 stock ahead of Benz’s CEO Mark Lynch-Staunton taking to the stage at D & D’s opening session on Monday to wax lyrical about the Glenburgh project, inland from Carnarvon in Western Australia.

The stock subsequently motored along to notch up a 17% gain to $4.04 over in three trading days before some profit taking saw the brakes tapped on Thursday to bring the stock back to $3.88, still some 12.4% ahead of the pre-D & D price.

The move up takes Benz to a market cap of $1.3 billion which is remarkable stuff given the company only had a market cap of $50 million before acquiring Glenburgh from Spartan Resources in January 2025.

That was ahead of Spartan being acquired by Ramelius later in the year for $2.4 billion on the strength of its high-grade Never Never gold discovery in the Murchison, with Ramelius inheriting the share component of the Glenburgh deal which at last count had it owning 11.74% of Benz.

Lynch-Staunton, a geologist and mine builder for the likes of Barrick in years gone by, left the D & D audience in no doubt that the company’s previously released exploration target of 10.1m-12moz of gold at Glenburgh was rock solid.

He said that the exploration target was a big number and some would say it’s unbelievable. But people needed to look at the geological setting.

“This is not a standard orogenic gold deposit,” he said. “This is a vast magmatic hydrothermal cell dumping fluids into a highly reactive basin, and that’s how we’re coming up with this close to half a billion tonnes at 0.6g/t to 0.7gt (in the exploration target).

“This target’s made up of two parts: the high grade domains and the low grade halo around it.

“We see optionality here; you could mine the high grades separately. But certainly, if I put my Barrick cap back on, I’d be looking at this as a bulk mining opportunity.

“And certainly, I see an inventory there that’s large enough to support a tier one operation (500,000ozpa for more than 10 years),” he said.

The last 10Moz-plus discovery in WA was De Grey Mining’s Hemi discovery in the Pilbara. It was acquired by Northern Star (ASX:NST) in May last year for $5 billion. Like Benz, De Grey was a $50m company before enjoying success with the drill bit.

Lynch-Staunton said Glenburgh said  Glenburgh as becoming impossible to ignore. “Discoveries like this are rare, very rare,” he said.

It is a point not lost on Northern Star when it pounced on Hemi even though it had its hands full at the time completing the expansion of its Kalgoorlie Super Pit operation.

GATEWAY MINING (ASX:GML):

Gateway Mining (ASX:GML) has been travelling along nicely of late thanks to building interest in the big time potential of its flagship Yandal gold project.

Results to date are certainly pointing in that direction with an aircore program identifying prospects worthy of being followed up with a reverse circulation drilling campaign.

Its shares have moved up from 4.3c at the start of July to 7.2c this week for a market cap of $162 million, helped along by results from Yandal and the Aussie gold price bursting back through $6,000/oz.

The start to a soil sampling program at its Glenburgh South project is likely another factor.

The sampling program is targeting the Errabiddy and Northern Shear corridors which Gateway reckons share striking similarities with the geological setting of Benz’s Glenburgh gold discovery.

“The ongoing phenomenal success of Benz highlights what is possible if Gateway delineates repeats of the mineralisation, with Glenburgh having recently delivered Benz a market cap in excess of $1 billion in a relatively short period of time,” Gateway CEO Richard Pugh said.

It stands as a nice addition of some blue-sky exploration potential while the flagship Yandal project is put through its paces.

TREK METALS (ASX:TKM):

There is a lot of low-grade (10-15%) manganese to be had in Western Australia. But it is a different story when it comes to the high-grade stuff like that mined since the 1950s at the now ConsMin-owned Woodie Woodie project in the Pilbara.

Trek Metals (ASX:TKM) has just broken the mould at its Kuro project within its broader Christmas Creek project in the Kimberley region of WA.

Assays from a maiden drilling program at Kuro have returned multiple high-grade intersections, including 10m at 42% manganese – the steel alloying ingredient with a growing future in batteries.

Trek was sold down 26% to 6.8c for a market cap of $50m on the assay results, most likely due to some irrational investor impatience that it hadn’t confirmed a Woodie Woodie-type find in the Kimberley with the maiden program.

But it is only early days and the company itself is more convinced than ever that it is on to a significant near-surface and high-grade manganese discovery.

Trek CEO Derek Marshall said that “receiving confirmation of high-grade manganese mineralisation below surface in these first laboratory assays represents a major breakthrough”.

“Kuro is just one prospect area – one that we initially targeted as there was a small window of rocks sticking out of the ground in a region where most of the rocks are under shallow sand cover,” Marshall said. “We have a large, interpreted basin to explore and we are doing just that.”