The company has been attracting attention lately due to heavy news flow from its drilling programs at Orient.

Iltani listed on the ASX in mid-2023 following a A$5 million initial public offering, with Orient as one of its original projects.

The project was mined early last century and explored in the 1970s and previously sat inside now-defunct base metal miner Red River Resources.

Donald Garner previously ran Red River before it ran into issues during the pandemic and identified the potential of Orient.

Garner established Iltani as a private company and acquired Orient from the administrators of Red River.

“When we started drilling, it was clear that the system was a lot bigger than the historic explorers had thought – multiples bigger,” he told Resources Rising Stars.

High-grade hits

Yesterday, Iltani reported the results from the first seven reverse circulation holes of a planned 42-hole infill program at Orient West.

Results included 3m at 403.6 grams per tonne silver equivalent from 28m, including 1m at 1118.7g/t AgEq plus 7m at 313.7g/t AgEq from 104m, including 3m at 660.9g/t AgEq including 1m at 1052.9g/t AgEq; 5m at 369.3g/t AgEq from 185m, including 2m at 825.4g/t AgEq; and 9m at 391.9g/t AgEq from 90m, including 3m at 916.3g/t AgEq, including 1m at 1933.4g/t AgEq.

The company said the shallower high-grade intersections enhanced the open pit potential of Orient West.

Continuous high-grade mineralisation has been defined over 230m down-dip, to a vertical depth of 180m, and remains open down-dip, demonstrating the potential for underground mining.

Iltani has defined an exploration target for Orient West of 74-100 million tonnes at 55-65g/t AgEq, including a high-grade core of 20-24Mt at 110-120g/t AgEq.

Drilling will restart in March following the end of the North Queensland wet season.

Orient East emerging

Just before Christmas, Iltani reported the results of 10 RC holes from Orient East, which delivered a peak result of 1m at 2066.3g/t AgEq from 77m (676g/t silver, 251g/t indium, 16.75% lead and 13.5% zinc).

“Without being negative about the industry, usually exploration fails,” Garner said.

“You have a hypothesis or a concept, you go out there and test it, and it’s not what you think it’s going to be.

“With Orient East, it was getting better and better and better.

“It was just stunning because we thought Orient West was good, then maybe we can get something out of Orient East, but now it looks like Orient East could be better than Orient West.

“Together, they form an extraordinarily good project, and the mineralisation at Orient East should strike across into the mineralisation at Orient West.”

The two prospects are more than 2km apart but the middle section hasn’t been explored as it’s under light cover.

“We know that the systems do join up, it’s just we don’t know that the quantum of the mineralisation so that’s something for us to explore.”

In the meantime, Iltani will release an exploration target for Orient East in early February.

Aussie silver space

Australia doesn’t have any primary silver mines with a number of previous mines failing.

Silver was one of the best performing commodities in 2024 and its current price of around US$30 an ounce is still well short of its 2010 record of US$50/oz.

“If you follow the silver sector in Australia, there’s been a bit of a split,” Garner said.

“So you’ve had the overseas silver companies, Andean Silver and Sun Silver being very successful and creating significant value for their shareholders, and those guys have done a fantastic job.”

The silver plays with assets in Australia haven’t performed as strongly.

Not helping matters was a couple of recent stumbles. Silver Mines shares halved last year after it hit a legal hurdle at its shovel-ready Bowdens project in New South Wales.

While just before Christmas, shares in Investigator Resources plunged after the company delayed the definitive feasibility study for its Paris silver project in South Australia.

Garner is hoping the market will start to recognise the potential of Orient and Iltani’s goal to delineate Australia’s largest silver resource in 2025.

Bowdens is currently Australia’s biggest silver deposit with resources of 179Mt at 58g/t AgEq for 334 million ounces of AqEq and reserves of 32.8Mt at 68g/t silver, 0.38% zinc and 0.29% lead for 71.7Moz of silver, 123,300t of zinc and 95,600t of lead.

“It’s not in our shareholders’ interests to spend funds drilling out sub-economic resources just to demonstrate we’ve got the biggest resource going,” Garner said.

“We want to drill ore and demonstrate we’ve got a viable project, and we believe we are on track for that.

“Before Silver Mines had their legal issues, they were a A$250-300 million company. We’re currently a A$10 million company, so come and invest in us. You can see where we’re going to be if this comes to fruition as we believe it will.”