Sonia Madigan:
There’s news from Augustus Minerals (AUG) today, and I’m joined by Andrew Reid, the Managing Director here in Kalgoorlie.
Now, Andrew, what’s the news from Ti Tree?
Andrew Reid:
Yeah, Hi Sonia.
We’ve announced some results today of the first pass rock chips at the Ti Tree project, and we’re pretty excited that we’ve extended some known localities of copper, particularly at our flagship project, the Copper Ridge area.
We’ve extended that from 600 metres up to 1300 metres with rock chips. So we’ve got the confirmation of rare earths and some of the iron stones.
Along with that, excitingly, is some increase in molybdenum that we’re also getting in those samples, so now we’re heading up to site.
We’re starting the Aboriginal Heritage Survey today. That’ll take us the best part of the next seven to 10 days.
And then after that, we’re really on the ground starting with drilling, so it’s very exciting, the next few weeks for Augustus.
Sonia Madigan:
But you’ve managed to take some time out to be here at Diggers & Dealers. Why is this event so important to companies such as Augustus?
Andrew Reid:
Look, it really is the place where all the seeds are sown for joint ventures, for any M&A activity and it really starts here in Diggers.
I think it’s a really important place where people get together [and] they’re able to, in an informal atmosphere, have these really important conversations and really share a lot of information and knowledge and that really is quite a key part of the mining industry.
Sonia Madigan:
And given your discussions and that you’re working in gold and also copper, how do you feel about the forecast there?
Andrew Reid:
Look, I think the rhetoric around copper is certainly very, very strong at the moment.
There seems to be a deficit in supply coming into the market over the preceding years. And there aren’t that many ASX juniors that have decent copper projects, so there really is a big niche area that Augustus can now slip quite nicely into, once we’re
on the ground and start to produce some of the results that we think that the project area can deliver.