FYI, Reports of big Rio copper find in WA fuel talk of ‘nearology’ opportunities
https://unauthorised investment advice/resources/reports-of-massive-rio-copper-find-in-wa-fuel-talk-of-nearology-opportunity-in-surrounding-juniors/
This will also affect AYR:
ALLOY RESOURCES (ASX:AYR):
Apologies to Alloy Resources (AYR) executive chairman Andy Viner for omitting Alloy as a player in WA’s remote Paterson region where Rio Tinto is rumoured to have made a copper discovery of size (RRS June 15: Rio’s hush-hush copper find in WA shaping up as a big ‘un).
Unbeknown to most, little Alloy picked up a tenement in the Paterson last November, just ahead of a pegging frenzy by Rio to lock the back door on its yet-to-be-confirmed copper discovery, reported here to be some 120km north-north-west of Newcrest’s Telfer gold-copper deposit.
As mentioned last week, satellite imagery shows that among the sand dunes, Rio has drilled at least 10 holes at 200m spacings with selected 100m infill holes and that it has recently cleared a site for a 40-man exploration camp.
The talk is that Rio got excited after it hit primary copper at a depth of 40m followed by visible primary mineralisation down to depths of 180m in two holes 200m apart just before the 2017 drilling program came to an end.
Rio has since pegged all the way north-west to 80 Mile Beach between Port Hedland and Broome on the coast, taking its land holding in the Paterson to a massive 9,000sqkm.
To that can be added Alloy’s November pick-up, with Alloy announcing during the week that it had struck a farm-in deal with Rio. It’s not the biggest spending farm-in around (Rio can earn a 70% interest by reimbursing Alloy $40,000 and spending at least $500,000 within three years). But it does go to Rio’s apparent eagerness to lock up as much Paterson ground within cooee of its discovery up north as it can.
The Alloy tenement’s northern boundary is some 50km south of the Rio discovery while its southern boundary is 25km from Telfer. Viner knows the area well from back in his days as exploration manager for Gindalbie when gold was its focus.
“It was just very fortuitous that the ground fell vacant,’’ Viner said yesterday about his November pick up. “No one has done anything on it since the late 1990s. When I was with Gindalbie we just did some first pass AC drilling and got some quite interesting copper and gold numbers which reinforced an old BHP anomaly.’
“Geologically, it’s prospective but logistically and financially it’s is very challenging. So I think it is a big company play for sure.”
So Alloy joins Antipa (AZY), Sipa (SRI), Red Metal (RDM), and Fortescue (FMG) no less, in having regional exposure to the Rio discovery.
And like all of those, Alloy has more on the go than its Paterson exposure. It is also in the thick of things in the cobalt rush to the west of Broken Hill in NSW, and it is currently drilling on its Horse Well joint venture with Doray Minerals in the WA’s north eastern goldfields, to the north-west of Northern Star’s pride and joy, the Jundee gold mine.
Alloy’s joint venture deal with Rio looks to have shone a light on the company. Its shares gained 0.1c or 16.6% yesterday to 0.7c, giving it a market cap of about $9m.
