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Cairns is the proposed non-executive chairmanof E79 Gold Mines, which is seeking A$4-7 million at 20c, with the aid of leadmanager Euroz Hartleys, to prospect around 683sq.km of Western Australia'sYilgarn Craton.
The company owns projects in theLaverton Tectonic Zone and Murchison Greenstone Belt, which have produced morethan 55 million ounces historically.
The Peter Ironside-founded shell wasoriginally known as ASX-listed Goldfields explorer Atticus Resources, and thenZamanco Minerals, with the latter winding down its manganese interests inZambia in 2015. It was removed from the official list in 2019m, after threeyears in suspension.
Cairns and Ironside have teamed up tovend the at Laverton South and Jungar Flats assets into the moribund shell inreturn for the issue of 15 million shares, and is now looking to relist, withIronside still on the board. He is also non-executive director at Stavely, andworked with Cairns at Integra.
Laverton South covers a 100%-ownedlicence and eight leases that comprise the Pinjin joint venture with St Barbarafor other tenements.
E79 can earn an 80% interest in thePinjin leases by spending $810,000. One of the leases, Lake Yindana, isdescribed as "unique" as the Geological Survey of WA maps show thetenement being underlain by granite, while public aeromagnetic data show afolded sequence of greenstones beneath what E79 believes is a shallow granitesill, an interpretation supported by past drilling.
Laverton South, which is east of theClaypan Fault, is believed to be structurally complex, similar to the settingfor the 1Moz-plus Lake Rebecca project being explored by Apollo Consolidated,which are surrounded by E79's leases.
The company's thesis is that thepresence of granite has discouraged exploration in the area, meaning E79 willbe the first real explorer to conduct meaningful exploration of the 25km-longgreenstone belt beneath a 1-20m thick granite sill.
The Lake Raeside and Lake Rebeccadrainage systems both pass through the project area, and E79 believes therecould be the right stratigraphy to generate gold and nickel deposits.
St Barbara has defined four maintargets, including a 10km-long gold trend coincident with a complexly foldedmafic sequence.
Jungar Flats is within 50km northeast ofthe 2.8Moz Big Bell gold deposit and three processing facilities and coverssome 30km of strike of the Big Bell Shear, where exploration has been limitedby 10-140m of cover, including a 15m thick hardpan that is likely to haverendered standard surface geochemical techniques ineffective.
E79 is targeting gold mineralisationsimilar to Big Bell, initially using new geophysical techniques, geochemicalsampling using the CSIRO ultra-fine soils method, and reconnaissance drillprogram.
The project straddles a narrownorth-south trending greenstone belt which links the extensive Cue-Weld Rangegreenstones in the south, to the north-west trending Mingah Range greenstonebelt to the north.
The area has seen sporadic explorationfor gold and nickel since the 1960s, with some anomalous low-order golddetected, but E79 believes past exploration is likely to have been ineffective,including three structural targets centred on stratigraphy and structureevaluated by Newcrest which returned a best intercept of 4m at 0.61 grams pertonne from 8m, directly along strike from a zone of weak gold anomalism, andthere is potential evidence for a hydrothermal mineral system.
Around half the cash to be raised isexpected to be directed to running the exploration effort.
The company enters the IPO process with$2.6 million cash.
Cairns and Ironside will share the boardwith non-executive director, veteran geologist Deborah Lord, who has workedwith Western Mining Corporation, Placer Dome, SRK Consulting and BHP, and iscurrently a director of the UWA Centre for Exploration Targeting and chair ofthe VALMIN Committee and College.
Former Black Cat Syndicate explorationmanager Ned Summerhayes is CEO.
Ironside, Benkari Group, Cairns andformer director Geoff Donohue are expected to be major shareholders following alisting, which is targeted for October.
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