Previously known as Gascoyne Resources, Lawson’s appearance at the 2023 edition passed and went without much notice despite green shoots already from early drilling at Never Never, as the recapitalised company looked to rebuild trust with investors previously burned by its Dalgaranga gold project.
He returned to the Gold Coast stage today as the toast of the town, with Never Never boasting almost 1.5Moz at over 8g/t and SPR worth $1.4 billion.
Despite a 6% drop in a tough market this morning, Lawson set a bullish tone, telling investors Never Never and its adjacent Pepper discovery had the scale and scope to “go much bigger than it is now”.
“Most of my career, I worked in narrow vein gold, where stopes are anywhere between two to five meters wide. Sometimes you’d see some blowouts. This is consistently averaging 14-metre wide stopes and the grades are incredible,” he told the room at the Royal Pines.
“So we’re working very, very carefully and systematically. I’m putting together a really nice reserve that I’m hoping to be well north of seven figures.”
Spartan shares have surged 300% in the past year, with Never Never pulling in Ramelius Resources (ASX:RMS), $2.4bn owner of the nearby 6Moz Mt Magnet mine, as an 18% major shareholder.
But Lawson said after walking into a ‘dumpster fire’ when he first took on Spartan following Gascoyne’s merger with his nearby explorer Firefly Resources, his first priority was to build the mine itself.
“They’re interested in what we’ve got. We’ve got the ounces they need,” he said.
“What is our plan? We’re just going to build it and define our own future. If anybody wants to get involved, that’s Plan B. But for us, we’re building this for our shareholders, and we’re going to continue.”
“As we drill, we just keep finding. Mount Magnet has 6 million ounces, 60 kilometres to our east. We’ve already built two and a half million ounces in less than three years,” Lawson noted.
“Mount Magnet’s had 100 years of having a go. We’ve had three years of having a go.
“So just to put that in context, nearology is a great thing. What I’m saying is that this has scale and scope to go much bigger than it is now.”
The portal for an underground drill drive is set to be blasted in a couple weeks.
That will enable Spartan to access high grade resources from underground, drilling with greater density to bring its Pepper deposit adjacent to Never Never into the indicated category, a high enough confidence level to be posted in reserves.
Diamond drilling from surface has already demonstrated the potential to grow Never Never and Pepper further. Together they boast 1.92Moz at 7.97g/t, with a recent strike at Pepper clocking in at a thick and juicy 27m at 39.15g/t gold.
One stat that really interests Lawson, a former Northern Star Resources (ASX:NST) geo, is the rarely quoted oz per vertical metre.
“This is quite meaningful to people who work in the mining industry. Over 1000 ounces per vertical metre used to be fairly well the benchmark for making things exciting,” he said.
“We’re pretty close to 2000 ounces per vertical metre in Never Never. Adding Pepper to that has pushed us closer to 4000ozpvm.
“When you do the rough sums, if you’re advancing 75-100m vertical per year, but you’ve got 4000 ounces across every vertical metre there, you can work out this is going to be a very productive mine.”
