Please give our readers a brief introduction to Emu NL
Emu NL (ASX: EMU) is an explorer based in Western Australia. Most of our projects are in Western Australia these days, although we have, over many years, participated in projects around the world.
We currently have a suite of projects, mainly focused on gold, copper, and nickel, but we’ve recently moved into the rare earth elements, picking up some cracker tenements out towards the east of Esperance in the southwest of Western Australia. The Western Australian projects complement what we will be doing at Georgetown in Queensland.
Emu has a few flagship projects, including Sunfire, Badja, and the new rare earths project in Western Australia. Please give readers some background to these projects
Sunfire is definitely our flagship project. It’s situated right alongside the Chalice Mining (ASX: CHN) and Venture Minerals’ (ASX: VMS) joint-venture project, known as the South West Project. It’s a “Julimar lookalike”, nickel sulphide project that indicates very strong magnetic feature. Sunfire is located in the Western Australia southwest, about three hours south of Perth in a highly prized area of the Yilgarn Craton.
We have noted anomalism of nickel and copper in soils, and there has been several historic high-grade nickel and copper results recorded from past drilling. Chrome is also highly prevalent over the tenement.
So, we are very excited about Sunfire. We’ve planned a geochemistry soils programme and an electromagnetic geophysics survey which we will complete as soon as we get access to the tenement. This is imminent. Following the surveys, I think we will lead have some refined vectors for drilling.
We’ve put a lot of energy into Badja Project. Completing more than 28km of drilling and extending the known gold resource. We bought the project with about 13,000oz of gold in an inferred JORC Resource, and we have put a lot of hard work into being able to upgraded that resource, which now includes gold ounces at Monte Cristo, Flying Emu, and Water Tank Hill discoveries. In the northern part of our tenements, from Monte Cristo up through to Flying Emu, we have found high grade gold, and now emerging is a high-grade tungsten story. We are currently waiting for multi element assays testing for tungsten and possible rare earth elements. This will give us a better definition of the tungsten story.
Tell us more about the potential tungsten discovery at Flying Emu. What follow up drilling is planned for the project?
We are waiting for assay results to see what that this looks like. The tungsten’s seems to be coincident with the gold. The tungsten is largely located within the mafic unit of rocks although may be disseminated in a halo around the gold. Granite intrusions, either side of the greenstones belt have acted as heat engines and possibly been the vehicle for the mineralization and remineralization of the area.
Gold and tungsten are largely hosted in the quartz veining with the tungsten potentially extending further into surrounding sediments. The grades are well and truly into the economic ore grades for tungsten. Now it’s just about finding how much is there.
Tell us about some of the rare earths exploration you are carrying out at Condingup, near Esperance
More recently, we’ve been looking for vacant ground in Western Australia and we’ve been offered several rare earth projects at exorbitant prices. We generally spend a good deal of our time in project generation and we are always looking for projects that can accrete value for our shareholder.
What we observed at Condingup was some high rare earth recordings by the Geological Survey of Western Australia where the tenement areas were vacant. We also picked up 88km2 of tenements in the Western Australian wheatbelt at Merredin after identifying two high value rare earth samples from Geological Survey of Western Australia.
We decided that we would put an application over vacant tenements at Condingup and it’s come to pass that our near neighbour, OD6 Metals (ASX: OD6), has had phenomenal success in the last few months with rare earths contained in the weathered, clay enriched intrusive Booanya granite suite.
We’re very excited about OD6’s success. We are remain confident and are anticipating similar results once we get it tested by the drill.
Gold and tungsten are largely hosted in the quartz veining with the tungsten potentially extending further into surrounding sediments
Tell us a little more about your Georgetown Project in Queensland
Georgetown’s three tenements have not been subjected to any modern exploration. There’s a lot of historic gold mines around Georgetown itself, but there appears to have been no development nor dedicated exploration there for decades.
Georgetown is located just 90km from the Kidston Mine, which was one of Australia’s largest gold mines. It produced more than 5Moz gold in its lifetime. We have noted copper anomalism at the northern most tenement, Fiery Creek. It is also located adjacent to and to the east of the Maureen Uranium project. The Georgetown Project is represented by lead, silver, and copper, critical minerals battery minerals and rare earth elements, so there is a lot going on here for follow up.
The vendors – Rugby Resources (TSXV: RUG) have also identified over 40 zones of alteration from the mapping and satellite photography. Georgetown represents real grassroots exploration and is quite exciting for us.
We picked this project up as a farm-in joint venture with an earn in over five years. We’ve kicked the process off now and will be identifying some priority exploration areas that we should start looking at. Reconnaissance work on ground will commence once the wet season is over, in April 2023.
What is it about Emu that’s exciting for investors at the moment?
I think it’s the fact that we have some great projects, and each one offers a genuine discovery opportunity. We’ll work hard on them, prioritize them and if they’re not going to come up to scratch, we’ll let them go.
Right now, we’re drilling at Viper, if we don’t get nickel sulphides we are looking for or anything else that kicks, then it’s a project that we might say, “we’ll move on”. Gracelands is offering the same sort of thing, and we have work to start there very soon. Sunfire is ready to kick off when we get on the ground. In summary Emu really do have a big portfolio of desirable and prospective projects.
We’d like to be better funded than we are, which means that we are going to have to look to the market on how we might become creative in our funding. Whether we do that through the sale of assets, joint ventures, or through raisings, we will need to resolve in coming months.
Finally, what future plans you can share with us?
At the moment, I’m keen to complete the drilling at Viper and see what the results can tell us. Our heritage survey should be completed very soon at Gracelands and that’ll lead us to commence drilling early next year.
We are preparing reconnaissance at our Condingup and Balladonia rare earth projects and are preparing vectors and priorities through a study at Georgetown with reconnaissance to begin probably in March or April. When Sunfire is ready we’ll be straight in there with geochemical and electromagnetic surveys. At Badja, we are awaiting tungsten assays and hopefully an upgraded resource for the project as well. So there’s a lot to be excited about in the near future.
