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Expanding in Resources
Mincor's strategy of expanding its interests across the broader minerals industry is exploration-driven and focused on targets likely to produce long-life growth assets. With two exceptions all of these exploration prospects are owned 100% by Mincor, and all except one are located in Australia.
Tottenham Copper Project (Mincor 100%)
The 209km2 Tottenham Copper Project is located in the prolific Lachland Fold Belt of New South Wales. The geological setting is similar to that of the Girilambone group of mines, including the operating Murrawombie (formerly Girilambone) and Tritton copper mines. Tottenham is also located 160km southeast of the CSA copper-silver mine and Peak gold mine near Cobar.
Tottenham - Location and Magnetics
Drilling in the late 1990s by copper producer Straits Resources Limited targeted shallow oxide mineralisation and returned significant results at Tottenham including 20 metres @ 2.1% copper (from 10 metres) at the Caroline Prospect, and 7 metres @ 1.5% copper (from 29 metres) and 10 metres @ 1.4% copper (from 43 metres) at the Orange Plains Prospect.
Mineralisation in the region is associated with shallow-dipping zones of massive sulphides with silica and magnetite altered Girilambone sedimentary and volcanic rocks. The broad structure of the region is antiformal. Potential for both sulphide and oxide mineralisation is present both down-dip and along strike of known occurrences.
Mincor has carried out two phases of drilling at Tottenham, and has identified an initial resource of 3.7 million tonnes at 1.1% copper for 41,850 tonnes.
Gascoyne Tungsten-Uranium Project (Mincor 100%)
The Gascoyne Tungsten-Uranium Project consists of two granted and 100% owned Exploration Licences and two licence applications covering a total area of 756km2 approximately 350km east of Carnarvon in Western Australia's Gascoyne region. The tenements cover known occurrences of tungsten and uranium as well as copper and gold.
Mincor's current focus is on the uranium potential of the area, and following several ground prospecting programs the Company has carried out costeaning and a program of shallow drilling. This work has confirmed the area as a high-quality uranium prospect, and further work is planned.
Tipperary Zinc-Lead Project (Ireland, Mincor, earning 85%)
Mincor holds an outstanding land position in the major Irish Midlands zinc-lead province. Mincor's holdings cover a portion of the Rathdowney Trend, the structural feature that is interpreted to control the location of the major Lisheen and Galmoy ore deposits some 50km to the northeast.
Previous drilling in the area was largely ineffective, as it was too shallow. However a number of holes penetrated to the prospective unit, the Walsortian Limestones, and two of these holes intersected zinc-lead mineralisation, associated, very importantly, with black matrix breccias, considered to be a key ore indicator. This drilling was done by Pasminco, but no follow-up work was carried out due to the financial collapse of that company in the early 2000s.
To date Mincor has completed five deep diamond holes in the area and these have further refined the target concept, and two holes have intersected lead-zinc mineralisation in the prospective Walsortian stratigraphy.
Georgina Zinc Project (Mincor 100%; JOGMEC earning 40%)
Mincor holds 9,000km2 in the Georgina Basin of the Northern Territory. The project is based on work done by the Northern Territory Geological Survey, highlighting the potential of the area to host zinc-lead mineralisation. The recent work, involving the study of core from deep oil well drilling, has demonstrated that the overall depth of the basin is much shallower than previously thought. Hence the possibility that mineralisation, the potential for which is widely recognised, may occur at depths shallow enough to be economic.
Mincor's Georgina Project is a very large conceptual play designed to test these concepts. If successful, the potential is for the discovery of an entire multi-deposit zinc-lead province, 100% owned by Mincor.
Mincor's exploration work in the area is currently funded by the Japanese Government entity JOGMEC, which is sole funding exploration in order to earn an interest of up to 40%.
Bonaparte Zinc-Lead Project (Mincor 100%)
This area lies in the far north of Western Australia, just north of the town of Kununurra. Work by North Ltd in the early 1990s uncovered a number of soil geochemical and geophysical anomalies in this area, a region of known zinc-lead prospectivity. These anomalies were never followed up by North, and remain as attractive untested drill targets.
Lake Cowan Gold Project (Mincor 100%)
Mincor's Lake Cowan Gold Project lies at the heart of one of the most sought after gold exploration provinces in Australia. The 21km2 tenement is located between Avoca Resources' Higginsville Gold Project (which includes the recent Trident and Athena discoveries) and the Zuleika South Project. To the north lies the 15 million ounce St Ives Gold Operations and to the south the 5 million ounce Norsemen operations.
The Lake Cowan Gold Project covers part of a large antiform in mafic basalt-gabbro-dolerite rocks adjacent to two of Western Australia's most prolific gold-bearing structures, the Boulder-Lefroy Fault and the Zuleika Shear.
Mincor's tenement has received little past exploration work due to its location under dry lake sediments. However, with modern technology this is less of a hurdle than it was in the past, and Mincor has considerable experience in exploring beneath lake sediments.