MetalsGrove Mining has been granted exploration tenement E77/3152 in Western Australia, known as the Leake prospect, which is considered promising for copper and gold exploration.
Located 135 kilometers south of the Southern Cross township and gold mining region, the Leake prospect covers an area of 66.7 square kilometers. Initially applied for in mid-2023 by the previous management team with a focus on lithium, MetalsGrove has since revised its strategy. Due to a downturn in the lithium market, the company, which has a market capitalization of $8.64 million, opted to relinquish eight of its tenement applications and concentrate on this copper and gold opportunity.
The Leake prospect features a geological composition predominantly of granite, with approximately 25% consisting of greenstone and minor granitic gneiss. Historical exploration in the area has included aircore drilling and soil sampling, which yielded a highest gold assay of 0.06 parts per million (ppm) and copper values ranging from 15 to 297 ppm.
MetalsGrove CEO Lijun Yang highlights the area’s potential, noting the proximity to previously mined sites for gold and nickel. “Despite the limited exploration conducted so far, which included a modest soil sampling program and a single aircore drilling line, the data has revealed a coherent copper anomaly,” Yang says.
The company plans to conduct additional soil sampling to extend the identified copper anomaly southward and determine optimal locations for further drilling. This program will also examine the granite-granite contact along strike from the nearby Great Southern Gold Mine.
The Great Southern Gold Mine, situated just 2 kilometers southeast, historically produced 1,000 tonnes of ore at 7.13 grams per tonne (g/t) in the 1920s and 2,053 tonnes at 5.72 g/t during the 1980s.
MetalsGrove Mining remains focused on exploring its portfolio of prospects across Australia, targeting gold, copper, and other minerals.
