I asked DT on the investor hub about TY and if that project is...

I asked DT on the investor hub about TY and if that project is done/on the backburner:

Tarraji-Yampi. Yes, there is a bit to go in to this one to explain appropriately. To say that it hasn’t lived up to expectations would certainly not be fair!

Context

The junior market has had a rough run for some time now. Lion Selection Group (ASX.LSX) puts out some great analysis on the sector and strongly recommend going through some of their reports and presentations. The capital markets have really tightened up, retail investors are feeling the pinch of inflation and rising interest rates and funds have by and large retreated to large caps and liquidity within the market. All of this meaning that we need to tighten up (we’ve significantly cut corporate, and marketing costs), and focus on the best bang for buck exploration opportunities that we have to deliver exploration success and rebuild momentum.

And the best place to do that, is Mangaroon. The project that not only keeps on giving (and has more to give) but allows us more year-round access and is easier and cheaper to operate from.

Having four “company scale” projects in a tight capital market becomes unwieldy in terms of best allocating capital (lots of minimum expenditure requirements) and technical focus.

So, enter the Strategic Review of our Portfolio, which will include Tarraji-Yampi.

Tarraji-Yampi

Firstly, we still strongly believe in the Cu-Au potential of TY, but we will undertake a strategic review to see how it can be progressed appropriately in the current market and within the portfolio that we have. This could be go slow / back burner, risk sharing partnership, divestment etc. The review will consider all options. We have already been reducing tenure over the past 12 months to retain the most prospective areas and reduce holding costs.

Following the Orion discovery in 2021, the focus has been on understanding the opportunities, the system and what it requires. Recent work confirming the VMS style system has been a major break through for us. We now have two systems at play, an epithermal system and the VMS system. And each has their own targeting characteristics.

After our discussions with Paul Hilliard, former chief geo at Sandfire, we know that EM and DHEM are the best tools to hunt down Orion’s Friends. But, since we are operating in an area with abundant sulphidic and graphitic shales, we are creating a lot of anomalies. And despite adding some of the auger geochemistry, magnetics etc, it has been challenging to reduce the number of false positives and prioritise targets (I think to date we have generated and modelled over 80 conductive plates from surface and down hole EM). Sandfire had a similar experience in the Bryah. Paul said, we simply need to test all the highly conductive targets!

The Kimberley is an expensive project to operate from (relative to our other projects), and we need to drill a lot of holes, and kiss a lot of frogs to find that next Discovery. Compare that to Mangaroon where we keep finding new mineralisation and making discoveries from first pass work with a high success rate. And importantly as well, from a momentum perspective, our field season in the Kimberley can be highly variable where as at Mangaroon, we can generally follow up quickly on the back of success.

These factors combined, within the context of a tight capital market, means that Mangaroon is the best option in our portfolio to allocate capital.

And, since there aren’t many advanced Cu-Au plays around, and TY has a lot of potential, we might be able to find a great partner or good commercial outcome for TY. Hence the strategic review.

In the meantime, it will be go slow, focus on generating / refining targets. We are still waiting for assays and the results of our IP program. We are constantly reviewing possible new datasets/techniques to assist with targeting the VMS and the IP is the first attempt to target the epithermal veins which is something we have wanted to do for some time. There remains a lot of upside at TY and we need to find the best way to realise it in the market that we are in.