Drill rig on standby in NSW as Australian Gold and Copper makes ASX debut

Australian Gold and Copper (AGC) is ready to fire the metaphorical starting gun on a drilling campaign in New South Wales’ prospective Lachlan Fold Belt following its oversubscribed initial public offering (IPO).

The company is anticipated to make its ASX debut this Wednesday under the ticker code ‘AGC’ and will have a market capitalisation of about $20 million upon listing.

“We were significantly oversubscribed so we have pared investors back to our maximum $10 million raising,” AGC’s managing director Glen Diemar revealed to Small Caps.

The IPO funds will be used for multiple discovery focused drilling programs across the company’s three projects – Moorefield, Cargelligo and Gundagai which cover 1,000sq km in the Central Lachlan region of NSW, and to fund follow up drill programs.

AGC has many significant targets but will initially prioritise seven near-surface gold-copper targets, ready for shallow reverse circulation (RC) drilling.

“These are potentially large tonnage projects with multiple layers of data – geophysics, geochemistry, outcropping geology and historic workings and drilling. They each have the ability to provide a significant discovery,” Mr Diemar said.

He also confirmed a drilling rig is already secured and the company aims to start drilling at the first project, Moorefield, by the end of January.

“We’re coming in hot and fast – we’re going to be drilling for a few weeks to a month on each of the drill targets, and we aim to drill all seven of these areas in the first six months”, Mr Diemar said.

Drill-ready gold and polymetallic targets

The Moorefield project contains more than 100 historic gold workings and one of its three target areas, Boxdale-Carlisle Reefs, is a major 15km gold trend that has returned high-grade rock chips grading at more than 1,000 grams per tonne gold. Historical drilling has also intersected 30m at 1.6g/t gold, including 11m at 2.68g/t gold.

The Cargelligo project comprises multiple Cobar-style gold-polymetallic prospects (gold, silver, copper, zinc and lead) within a 15km shear zone, south along strike from the Cobar mining district.

Two Cargelligo drill-ready targets, Mount Boorithumble and Achilles 3, are considered lookalikes to Aurelia Metals’ (ASX: AMI) Hera and Federation discoveries, which are located 150km north along strike.

The Gundagai project also lies within a historic mining district but has remained underexplored for almost 50 years. The exciting prospect, a 1.2km long gold target is scheduled for RC drilling after Cargelligo.

While the drilling campaign will start at Moorefield, Mr Diemar said the exact timeline and order of drilling would be flexible to account for visual results, weather and cropping windows.

Low-cost exploration and low sovereign risk

Mr Diemar said a standout advantage of AGC is its multiple drill-ready, near surface targets making rapid drill testing of each faster and lower cost and in a low sovereign risk environment of Australia and Central NSW.

“We like that we can get in the car and drive just a couple of hours to the project, lean on the fence with the landowner, have a chat, grow rapport, and then go out there and check your drill rig, all within a couple of hours from the exploration office. ”

He added that the region is a “great place to explore” with quick drill permitting in NSW and the fact that the company has fostered good relationships with landowners. Shallow drilling also helps to keep costs down.

“We are drilling near-surface shallow gold targets (initial planned drilling is RC drilling to 100-150m) which have rocks outcropping with multiple layers of datasets, often with historic workings on them, ” Mr Diemar said.