But how many hit the boards controlling a district-scale gold system with a whopping 1.66Moz resource, let alone at a grade of 3.28gpt.
That was the running start made by Lac Gold ( Lac) when it debuted on the ASX in June this year.
The company’s flagship asset, the Rouyn gold project, was acquired two years earlier by a pair of highly experienced WA mining men, Andrew Stocks and Matthew Keegan, from Canadian interests that decided to turn their attention to their other assets.
The pair merged the privately-owned Lac with ASX-listed Ardiden, effectively creating a new gold explorer with Rouyn as the key asset.
Rouyn is in Québec, along the Cadillac-Break within the Abitibi gold belt – one of the world’s premier mining regions – which hosts multi-million-ounce deposits owned and operated by some of the globe’s largest gold companies.
A map of this region and its world-class deposits make it look like Kalgoorlie on steroids.
Lac managing director Andrew Stocks says the company offers investors a simple proposition: creating substantial value by growing the inventory at what is a very under-explored gold system.
“We have only been drilling for six months and we have already extended the known mineralisation well beyond the existing resource boundary,” Stocks says.
“The results were so good that we are now preparing to increase our drilling capacity further.
“There is simply low-hanging fruit all around and below the resource. It had not been drilled for years, there simply was not the economic incentive to drill it out and grow the resource, as there is now.
“Rouyn’s time has come. We hold a camp-scale asset with 6km of mineralised strike, drilled out only in part to shallow depths in a district renowned for mine developments extending to over 3km in depth.”
The latest assays from this drilling at Rouyn highlight the huge potential resource upside. They include:
AS-26-793: 5.65m@141.29gpt Au (from 148.15m) including 0.5m@1,580gpt Au
AS-26-787: 97.50m@1.04gpt Au (from 554.65m) including 17.00m@3.58gpt Au
AS-26-788: 49.95m@1.12gpt Au (from 623.15m) including 3.75m@7.00gpt Au
AS-26-779: 29.15m@4.96gpt Au (from 56.65m) including 6.0m@20.78gpt Au and 7.0m@16.1 gpt Au (from 131m) including 1.0m@78.7gpt Au & 1m@27.0gpt Au
AS-26-795: 12.55m@5.58gpt Au (from 145.90) including 0.4m@74.70gpt Au & 0.60m@31.30gpt Au
“The results received during the June quarter indicate that high-grade mineralisation is more continuous and extensive than previously interpreted and modelled, increasing confidence in the evolving geological model and the potential for future resource growth,” Stocks says.
Lac also recently completed the acquisition of the historical Golden Patricia gold mine and surrounding property in Ontario from Barrick. Golden Patricia produced 619,796oz of gold at an astonishing average grade of 16.48gpt between 1988-1997, making it one of Canada’s highest-grade historical gold mines.
Golden Patricia consolidates the company’s position in the Pickle Lake district and provides a second long-term growth platform.
But Lac makes no bones about the fact that Rouyn remains its flagship asset, primary value driver and the immediate focus for management’s attention and capital allocation.
The opportunity for investors to take advantage of Lac’s new-comer status to the ASX was highlighted in a research report from Blue Ocean Equities, which has a $2.15 price target on the stock, well up on its current price of 32c.
Blue Ocean said the combination of high-grade intercepts and several drill holes intersecting broad mineralised halos supported the interpretation of a large hydrothermal gold system surrounding localised higher-grade shoots.
“These drilling results are likely to enhance the attractiveness of Rouyn to nearby producers operating under-utilised plants (Agnico Eagle, IAMGOLD, Eldorado) as material volumes of high-grade ore from Rouyn could easily find a home via rail or road,” the report said.
” Lac’s reinterpretation of historic drilling results combined with its 45,000m drilling programme could also lead to a materially larger resource and mining scale versus our initial base case (700,000tpa@~5gpt Au for ~100,000oz/pa Au).”
For Stocks, however, the immediate focus remains clear.
“Rouyn is where we’re investing our capital, our people and our technical effort. We believe we’re only beginning to understand the scale of this gold system, and every drill hole is helping us build that understanding,” he says.
