Sonia Madigan:
Mantle Minerals (ASX:MTL) is now well into a 15,000-metre gold drilling program at its Roberts Hill project inland from Port Hedland.
Executive Chairman Nick Poll has just got back from site. Welcome Nick.
Nick Poll:
Hi Sonia.
Sonia Madigan:
Nick, is everything going as you hoped and as you expected?
Nick Poll:
Absolutely and exceeded expectations.
At the end of the day, the drill rig just arrived on site and started drilling within
half an hour. But that’s obviously reflecting a lot of preparation.
We’ve got a great team on the ground and it was great to be out there and see it
come in.
Sonia Madigan:
So how long do you expect a program of this size to take?
Nick Poll:
Hopefully six weeks. It could be less if the team have luck. Sometimes if something goes wrong it can take a bit longer. Sometimes they can outperform and finish early.
Sonia Madigan:
What can you tell us about the activities on the ground there at Roberts Hill?
Nick Poll:
When we’re drilling a hole we first have to get through the covering sediments.
So once we’re below the covering sediments we’re in the basement rocks which is where we’re looking for the gold. We need to define that boundary and look very carefully at what we’re bringing up after we’ve gone past that boundary. And specifically, we’re looking for things like mafic rocks, quartz, anything that might be an indication that there’s some gold around.
It’s pretty hectic with an aircore drilling rig because they can drill about 600 metres a day. It produces a lot of samples, so there’s a lot of activity around sample collection, making sure that all the geology is getting done.
Sonia Madigan:
So why is Mantle Minerals making such an investment there at Roberts Hill?
Nick Poll:
We are next to this giant gold mineralisation at Hemi and it’s tens of kilometres long. We know that on the grey side of the fence, they’ve got lots of structures and lots of great rocks types and all that but nothing’s been done on our side of the fence and furthermore, it’s harder to detect their rocks on our ground because the geophysics is not as good quality.
The only way we can figure it out is to drill it. This is really exciting because we don’t know what we’re gonna bring up, but we’re hoping we’ll bring up at least four metres at 0.2 grams per tonne gold. In an air core program, that’s normal and we can follow it up with RC. Why that? Because that’s the kind of intersections they found above the Hemi deposit.
Sonia Madigan:
Now, before we go, Nick, your quarterly report is out today. What does that show?
Nick Poll:
Well, of course, we’re just going over historical announcements and so forth, but what it does show is that we have enough cash to fund this drilling program and some follow-up, reverse circulation drilling early next year too, so we’re very excited about being able to execute this program with the resources that we already have.
Sonia Madigan:
And when will we expect some results?
Nick Poll:
Early next year, gold assays still take a long time, so we might get lucky, maybe
we’ll get some before Christmas, but the majority will probably come in January next year.