Artemis publishes first JORC resource for Carlow Castle, more to come

Artemis Resources (ASX: ARV) has published the first in a series of JORC-compliant resources for its Carlow Castle cobalt, gold and copper project in Western Australia’s Pilbara.

The resource is for the project’s smallest deposit Quod Est and sits at 557,000t grading 1 gram per tonne gold, 0.2% cobalt and 0.5% copper, with the deposit remaining open at depth.

Better intercepts from drilling at Quod Est returned 6m at 1.94% cobalt, 4.14g/t gold and 1.67% copper, and 4m at 1.13% cobalt, 10.71g/t gold and 4.44% copper.

“We believe Carlow Castle has the potential to be a significant new cobalt province in Australia and we are pleased to report the first of what will eventually be many JORC compliant resources on our 100%-owned Carlow Castle project near Karratha,” Artemis executive chairman David Lenigas said.

“With the world cobalt prices now at US$75,000 a tonne, the overall in-situ rock value of cobalt at 0.05% cobalt cut-off at our Quod Est deposit, with a grade of 0.3% cobalt, exceeds the combined values of gold at 1.5g/t and copper at 0.6%,” he added.

A JORC-resource for the larger Carlow Castle South deposit is due by the end of January, with Artemis preparing to feed Carlow Castle ore through its Radio Hill plant by mid-year.

“This latest geochemistry program, covering 50 square kilometres, has also surprisingly identified a large number of new high priority cobalt, gold and copper targets ready for drilling,” Mr Lenigas said.

He added the company had already received interest for its “conflict-free” cobalt from international companies.

Artemis wholly owns the nearby Radio Hill processing plant which is undergoing refurbishment and upgrade work including integrating a 500,000 tonne per annum gravity gold circuit to process ore from Carlow Castle and Silica Hills projects.

The gravity circuit is in addition to existing 5,000tpa capacity to treat nearby ore.

Once the upgrade is complete, Radio Hill will have more than 1mtpa capacity. The plant is scheduled to be fully operational by the end of June.

In mid-afternoon trade, Artemis’ share price was steady at A$0.25.