Back in March, Torque appointed former Spartan Resources boss Simon Lawson as chairman, former Spartan chief operating officer Craig Jones as CEO and managing director, former Spartan executive director David Coyne as non-executive director and former Spartan exploration manager Monty Graham as general manager, exploration.

It’s the same team behind the high-grade Never Never discovery, which transformed Spartan from a struggling low-grade gold miner into an ASX 200 developer which was acquired by Ramelius Resources for A$2.5 billion last year.

The plan at Torque is simple: drill, drill, drill.

This week, Torque announced an update of the resource to 3.47 million tonnes at 3.1 grams per tonne gold for 351,000 ounces of gold, a 67% increase in ounces, including 114,000oz in the indicated category.

The combined Paris deposit open pit and underground resources increased by 101,000oz ounces to 2.01Mt at 3.8g/t gold for 253,000oz.

The resource boundaries remain open and all deposits are open at depth.

The stock was sold off on the announcement, with Canaccord Genuity analyst Paul Howard saying he expected a number closer to 500,000oz.

“The result appears to reflect a deliberate focus on improving geological confidence and resource classification rather than maximising headline ounces, with management noting that tighter geological controls and reinterpretation of mineralised domains have resulted in a more robust and realistic model,” he said.

Jones said the resource was about updating the market given it had been nearly two years since the resource had been calculated.

“Now that the resource is out, it’s the foundational reset,” he said.

“[The new management team] hasn’t really influenced too much to get to this point, but it’s about the growth and the discovery outside of Paris – that’s the exciting part for us – this is the catalyst to free us up to now go and do that as an exploration team.”

RPM

When the resource was released, Torque announced its new RPM strategy.

RPM stands for ‘rapid path to a million ounces’, with the plan being to aggressively drill and hit that target of 1Moz grading at least 2g/t within two years.

“It’s not the final goal – this is just a starting point for us,” Jones said.

The previous management team was capital constrained but Torque has A$13.7 million in cash to aggressively explore.

Last month, initial drilling at Paris returned 1.4m at 32.33g/t gold from 506.9m, including 0.4m at 103g/t gold, including visible gold.

The focus won’t just be on the main Paris deposit.

The resources for the 73,000oz HHH deposit and 25,000oz Observation deposit weren’t upgraded in this week’s update, but will be included in the next update early next year.

The company will drill at least 70,000m over the next year with two drill rigs working continuously.

It will also use electromagnetic surveys to assist with targeting.

“It’s about exploration and growth, so about 40% of the effort of the drilling is going to be in and around the resource, but 60% of it is on these new prospects that have just not been drilled at all,” Jones said.

One of those prospects is Maynards Dam, which returned 4m at 21.2g/t gold from 22m, but has never been followed up.

“That’s just one of the prospects sitting there, that’s been sitting in the Gold Fields’ hands for a very long time, and it’s been in Torque’s for a while, but all their effort and focus has been on Paris,” Jones said.

“It’s really taking the blinkers off and empowering the geos and say let’s go and have a look in this highly endowed greenstone belt.”

The Paris resource covers just 2.5km of strike over a 55km strike length.

“The average drilling outside of Paris on the rest of the 55km of strike that we’ve got is only 40m,” Jones said.

“Nobody’s finding a million ounces in 40m.”

At this stage, Howard’s exploration target model sees the potential for around 1.6Moz to be defined across Torque’s project area over time, and maintained a price target of A55c, more than double this week’s share price.

Jones said there will be regular news flow as drilling results are received. The next batch may arrive in time for his presentation at Diggers and Dealers in Kalgoorlie in early August.

“I’ve still got the conviction that this ground has got so much more to give,” Jones said.

“We’ve just got to go and do the work.”