This column first looked at Xpedra in late April, when the company reported that the first hole at its under-explored Springfield project in NSW returned 36m at 1.84 grams per tonne gold from 19m.

In the four months since then, the company has continued to report broad gold intercepts, including 94m at 2g/t gold from 80m, including 13m at 10.21g/t gold.

However, the share price hasn’t moved since then and the company remains valued at less than $20 million.

Xpedra managing director Scott Funston said recent feedback was that people just weren’t yet aware of the story.

“Since then, I’ve done a roadshow to Sydney and Melbourne, which was from the 10th to the 14th of August,” he said.

“As we get the story out there, the volumes have definitely increased.

“I think we’ve turned over nearly 70 million shares since I did the roadshow to Sydney and Melbourne … and the 10 or 12 trading days before that, it wasn’t even 20 million shares traded.

“I think it’s just a matter of getting the story out there to people, and every time we speak to people, they’re definitely interested and they really like it.”

As part of the effort, Funston will be presenting at the Resources Rising Stars Conference on the Gold Coast next month for the first time.

Springfield growing

Earlier this week, Xpedra released the assay results from the four deepest holes drilled to date at Springfield.

Results included 5m at 6.58g/t gold from 108m; 64m at 1.34g/t gold from 140m, including 21m at 2.41g/t gold, including 10m at 3.68g/t gold; 27m at 1.5g/t gold from 140m, including 6m at 3.68g/t gold from 142m; and 16m at 1.24g/t gold from 197m.

“They continue the theme of broad mineralisation with high-grade intervals, and we’ve got depth extensions, which is quite exciting because it’s a good way to add ounces,” Funston said.

Shallow mineralisation has been intersected continuously over at least 400m of strike, with the system remaining completely open at depth and along strike.

There had only been around 6000m of historical drilling at Springfield to an average depth of just 35m and there was no drilling at all since 1999 until Xpedra’s first program this year.

Xpedra has only drilled around 3500m to date.

“We don’t even know what the structure of the formation of the gold is. We know it’s intrusive-hosted, but we don’t know if it’s intrusive-related, for example,” Funston said.

“We don’t know if it’s stockworks. We don’t know if it’s sheeted veins – we just don’t know. We’re only 31 holes in.”

Still, Funston is extremely encouraged by the early results and is targeting at least a million ounces.

“That’s our first goal. And if we think it’s at a million ounces and it’s going to get to 2 or 3 million ounces, then we won’t put our JORC resource until we actually know exactly what we’re dealing with, and it’s just way too early to do any of those sorts of things at the moment,” he said.

Next moves

Last week, Xpedra kicked off a soil sampling program along the entire 7km structural corridor to generate additional drilling targets.

“There’s also four targets out to the east of that structural corridor that have got gold mineralisation on them and have never been followed up,” Funston said.

“We’ll also be doing some soils in and around where we’ve drilled so far to see if there’s any patterns there that we can correlate to the grades we’re getting.”

The results of the first two phases of drilling, as well as the soil sampling program, will be used to plan the next phase of drilling.

Funston envisages the phase three program being at least 3500m.

“The next campaign will double the amount of metres that we’ve drill at Springfield, and that’ll be chasing strike extensions and depth extensions as well,” he said.

The program will start to test strike extensions along the monzodiorite intrusion, which continues north for a further 1.1km beyond the northern-most hole drilled to date, as well as down-dip extensions.

Only eight holes have been drilled deeper than 100m to date.

Xpedra is expecting plenty of news flow with results from the soil sampling to start flowing in the coming weeks, alongside the start of the next drilling program.

“As soon as we get approvals, we’ll start drilling,” he said.

The company expects the current program to continue through until the end of the year.