In a tough market for juniors, most companies have no choice but to focus on one main project.

That’s not the case for Legacy Minerals (LGM), which, by the end of this year, will have conducted at least six drilling campaigns across multiple projects in New South Wales’ Lachlan Fold Belt.

Legacy has a hybrid discovery approach, funding its own exploration as well as bringing on partners.

“We like to see as many darts being thrown at the dart board as possible to give our shareholders the best chance of multiple discoveries,” Legacy managing director Chris Byrne told a Resources Rising Stars webinar this week.

Legacy has a A$15 million joint venture with the world’s biggest gold miner, Newmont, at Bauloora, a A$6 million partnership with S2 Resources at Glenlogan and an alliance with Earth AI at Fontenoy.

The Bauloora JV is one of only two deals Newmont has done in Australia in the past three years – the other being the multibillion-dollar takeover of Newcrest Mining.

Drilling is underway at the project now, targeting a tier one epithermal gold deposit.

The three areas being targeted in the program have never been diamond drilled.

Byrne said the campaign would be an important technical step for the project.

“Newmont are aggressively targeting tier one assets,” he said. “As [the company] gets bigger, the bar gets higher.”

Byrne said that while Bauloora was very early stage, there were already encouraging signs, including veins up to 3m wide and rock chips grading up to 3701 grams per tonne silver, 6.9g/t gold, 6.4% copper and 55% lead and zinc.

The first results are expected in August.

S2, run by successful explorer Mark Bennett and backed by prospector Mark Creasy, is Legacy’s partner at Glenlogan, which is seen as a deep Cadia-style target.

“We think it has all the hallmarks of a large porphyry system,” Byrne said.

Drilling is being planned, with assays due from September onwards.

Legacy has also recently completed a drilling program at its 100%-owned Black Range project.

“We really like it because it’s been significantly underexplored,” Byrne said. “We’re the first on the ground in 30 years since Newcrest.”

While assays are pending, Legacy intersected epithermal veins in the first diamond drilling at the Sugarbag Hill prospect.

“We’re extremely happy with what we got there,” Byrne said. “For a first-pass campaign, you couldn’t hope for better visuals.”

The first assay results are due next month.

Drilling at the Fontenoy nickel-copper-PGE project, a JV with Earth AI, is scheduled to begin next month.

Legacy is also planning field work at the Cobar and Drake projects.

“We want multiple discoveries under our belt,” Byrne said

The Greatland comparison

Investors can sometimes see JVs as a negative because juniors are perceived to be giving away the potential upside.

But Byrne said there were many examples of that model generating some significant returns for shareholders.

“Greatland Gold is a very great, well-known Australian case of that,” he said.

London-listed, Perth-based Greatland welcomed Newcrest as a partner at its Havieron gold-copper discovery in Western Australia in early 2019.

At that stage, Greatland’s market capitalisation was around A$100 million – still quadruple what Legacy’s is today – and rose to as high as A$1.7 billion as Newcrest made further discoveries and advanced the project to development.

“That’s just based of a 30% minority stake in what is probably considered to be a tier one, tier two-type deposit,” Byrne said.

“Importantly, the difference that we see in our projects, and what we’re looking for when we enter into joint ventures, is the upfront amount needs to reflect the effort it’s going to take to make the discovery and prove the concept that we’ve got a tier one porphyry or a tier one epithermal system, and we see the A$15 million and A$6 million funding get us there.”

In both the Newmont and S2 JVs, Legacy can elect for its interest to drop to a free-carry 20% interest through to production.

“That’s a significant point of difference when you look at what happens to a lot of other companies … we have the optionality of not having to go to the market to raise equity or debt as has been the case with Greatland,” Byrne said.

Lachlan Fold Belt

There’s a lot going on in the Lachlan Fold Belt as evidenced by the recent change of ownership of the Northparkes, CSA and Cadia mines.

Alkane Resources has made the Boda discovery and Regis Resources is reaching the end of a long process to get its McPhillamys gold mine approved.

More recently, Australian Gold and Copper more than tripled in value following a gold and base metals discovery in the region.

“That’s demonstrated the value-add a great discovery can do for a company,” Byrne said.

Byrne described the belt as “a hugely untested search space” but the majors were starting to pay attention.

According to Byrne, A$210 million worth of joint ventures have been signed in the belt in the past 12 months.

“It really puts it as a global hot spot for greenfields investment.”