Mining

Argent Minerals to begin drilling NSW projects after oversubscribed placement

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By Lorna Nicholas - 
Argent Minerals ASX ARD Lachlan Fold Belt NSW Evolution Mining

Argent Minerals is cashed up to fund drilling at four of its NSW projects targeting copper, gold, silver, zinc and lead mineralisation located in the Lachlan Fold Belt close to Evolution Mining’s Cowal operation.

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Argent Minerals (ASX: ARD) is cashed up after a heavily oversubscribed placement and poised to begin immediate drilling programs across its projects in search of gold, copper, silver, zinc and lead.

The company raised $1.15 million via a private placement to sophisticated and professional investors.

A further $150,000 placement was taken up by Argent’s directors with the company raising $1.3 million in total before costs.

Argent has also secured $255,000 in drilling grants from the highly contested cooperative geosciences panel of the NSW Government to boost its exploration funds.

The cash injection follows Argent revealing the Australian Tax Office had agreed $350,000-worth of previously disputed research and development activities were now deemed “eligible expenditure”.

With the remainder that Argent owes, it is finalising a payment plan with the ATO to assist with cash preservation.

“Argent was overwhelmed with the heavily oversubscribed placement and we are looking forward to our most aggressive exploration program in recent years,” Argent managing director and chief executive officer George Karageorge said.

He added the company will begin drilling immediately across most of its project.

NSW drilling programs

Reverse circulation drilling will be undertaken at JORC compliant Argent’s flagship Kemp field project in NSW and will target anomalous rock chip samples taken in March 2020.

Rock chip samples yielded up to 4.95% copper, 0.96 grams per tonne gold, 40.02g/t silver and 1.56% lead – sampled 400m across strike from the main polymetallic silver, lead and zinc orebody.

The 3,000m program will also involve extension drilling to shore up the existing resource which totals 52 million ounces of silver equivalent at 120g/t silver equivalent, and 520,000t of zinc equivalent at 2% zinc equivalent.

At West Wyalong, which is also in part of the Lachlan Fold in NSW, 3,000m of RC drilling and 1,500m of diamond drilling has been planned as part of the second pass drilling program based on a revised 3D inversion modelling announced in the December 2019 quarterly report.

This program is aiming to find a similar style deposit to Evolution Mining’s (ASX: EVN) nearby Cowal gold mine which has a 7.4Moz gold resource.

Around 2,200m of RC drilling will be undertaken at the Pine Ridge gold mine which will target high-grade gold on the same structure that hosts Regis Resources’ (ASX: RRL) 2.3Moz McPhillamy’s gold project.

Over at Loch Lily, 2,000m of RC drilling will be carried out, with the project covering 1,500sq km and 125km of strike.

“This is well timed with the gold, copper and silver price rally and settlement of the AUS Industry R&D claim with the ATO,” Mr Karageorge said.