The stock has drifted lower this year, initially due to delays in getting land access to the Junction copper-silver discovery.

On a webinar this week, Cairns revealed that the company had spent most of the first half of the year in discussions with a group about a reverse takeover that would have seen a significant polymetallic asset in Canada come into the Stavely stable.

“The terms of the transaction were verbally agreed and then, at the last minute, the party walked away,” Cairns said.

“The net result is we lost momentum in the market. Over time I think we can regain that momentum that we’ve lost in the market.”

Back on the ground

With the distraction out of the way, Stavely is now focused on getting back on the ground in western Victoria.

The company’s Fairview North and Fairview South gold prospects, part of the Stavely project, are considered to form part of a plus-10km mineralised structure extending from the Cayley Lode in the north down to Fairview South.

Drilling by Stavely at Fairview North back in 2017 returned 30m at 1.4 grams per tonne gold from 47m drill, including 11m at 2.4g/t gold; 57m at 0.57g/t gold from surface, including 17m at 1.23g/t gold; and 68m at 0.42g/t gold from surface, including 16m at 1.04g/t gold.

Work by a previous explorer returned results including 9.5m at 5.45g/t gold from 21m, including 2m at 17.44g/t gold; 22m @ 1.71g/t gold from 8m, including 2m at 6.77g/t gold from 28m; 8m at 4.72g/t gold from 17m, including 2m at 16.06g/t gold from 23m; and 8m at 5.01g/t gold from 6m.

Stavely completed a seven-hole reverse circulation program at Fairview North last month and is awaiting assays.

The company also completed an RC hole at Fairview South, as well as rock chip sampling, the latter of which extended the prospect by up to 600m to the south.

Historical drill results from Fairview South include 42m at 1.14g/t gold from surface, including 9m at 3g/t gold; 29m at 1.42g/t gold from surface; 29m at 0.96g/t gold from surface, including 4m at 2.33g/t gold; 16m at 0.99g/t gold from 8m; and 6m at 1.62g/t gold from 22m.

Stavely also hopes to drill the S41 breccia-hosted gold prospect later this year, with Cairns suggesting it could have the greatest scale potential.

Only one diamond hole has ever been drilled into the 2km by 750m target, returning 1m at 2.16g/t gold from 282m; 37m at 0.1g/t gold, including 2m at 0.56g/t gold from 320m; and 5m at 24.3g/t silver from 353m.

Cairns described S41 as a “longer burn”.

“We know that there’s gold in the system,” he said. “We haven’t got to where we believe the best mineralisation should be on the margins of these breccia pipes.”

Big targets

Stavely’s namesake project has already delivered a major discovery, the Cayley Lode.

The Cayley Lode has a resource of 9.3 million tonnes at 1.23% copper, 0.23g/t gold and 7.1g/t silver for 252 million pounds of contained copper, 65,000 ounces of gold and 2.1 million ounces of silver and remains open at depth.

Cairns said another discovery at Stavely could unlock the value of the Cayley Lode.

“We don’t go for small targets. We go for big targets and targets that can make a significant difference … we want to be attractive to other companies,” he said.

“I look at the amount of M&A in the gold space currently and if we did discover something meaningful there, I think people would be crawling all over it.”

Cairns said the Stavely Belt, of which the company controls 130km, remains underexplored and had flown under the radar.

“If we had 130km of the Maricunga Belt in Chile, it would be a different story, but we’ve got 130km of the Stavely Belt,” he said.

“The flipside of that is by comparison, Stavely is underexplored and the fact we’ve been able to generate, from first principles, the S41 opportunity is an illustration of what’s still out there to be found in these belts.”

Cairns said the “lean and mean” Stavely team were highly leveraged to exploration success, holding about 10% of the stock.

“It’s heads down, bums up for the rest of the year and into next year,” he said.

“I don’t think there are many companies in this universe or this sector where you’re going to get management who are so hands on and so involved.

“We’ve got our backs to the wheel and we’re pushing for this.”