Mining

Legacy Minerals’ IPO will finance two-years of drilling across highly prospective Lachlan Fold Belt

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By Robin Bromby - 
Legacy Minerals ASX IPO LGM drilling Lachlan Fold Belt gold copper

Legacy Minerals is on the hunt for copper and gold in NSW’s Lachlan Fold Belt, with 20,000m of drilling planned.

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The IPO rush continues to run strong, fuelled by bullish commodity prices and investor enthusiasm, with Legacy Minerals bringing to market gold and copper projects on New South Wales’ exploration super-hot Lachlan Fold Belt — some with drill-ready targets.

The company, which will trade under the ticker ‘LGM’ when listed, is seeking to raise between $5 million and $7 million, with the funds to initially finance a planned 20,000m drilling program.

This IPO will see the issue of between 25 million and 35 million new shares at $0.20 each, with the offer due to close on 17 August.

Legacy Minerals was founded in 2017 and has, since then, acquired 864 square kilometres in the Lachlan Fold Belt containing its projects, the belt being home to one of Australia’s largest gold mines, Cadia Valley owned by Newcrest Mining (ASX: NCM).

Immediately post the IPO, the company plan to drill test underneath the historic Bauloora mine – following up on some bonanza silver and high-grade gold from unmined production drives that assayed as high as 3,701 grams per tonne silver, 6.9g/t gold, 29% lead, 26% zinc and 6.4% copper.

Previous drilling hit wide gold-silver

Legacy chairman David Carland says the company’s projects also contain “numerous” untested geochemical, geophysical and geological targets.

“Legacy Minerals has a straightforward exploration strategy: to drill and develop a pipeline of prospective targets for gold and copper mineralisation,” he added.

“The work conducted on the tenements has defined drill-ready prospects across the Legacy Minerals portfolio,” Dr Carland continued.

Over the next two years, these are to be tested with 20,000m of drilling.

The prospectus notes that this reverse circulation drilling will expand on the holes drilled by previous explorers who reported “significant” grades and widths of gold and silver.

The drilling will be carried out to test shallow and high-grade epithermal gold-silver (and potentially base metals) and low sulphide gold-bearing vein targets at Bauloora, McMahon’s Reef and Harden projects.

In parallel to these programs, further geochemical and geophysical work will be undertaken at the Cobar, Fontenoy and Rockley targets.

Project in ‘prolific’ mineral production zone

At the Cobar project, there is 20km of strike where the company is targeting gold-copper along with lead and zinc lying under shallow transported cover.

The project is located in the Cobar Basin, described by the company as “one of Australia’s most prominent and prolific base and precious metals production regions”.

At Bauloora, one of the largest low sulphidation systems in NSW, there are numerous prospects including the Mee Mar prospect. This vein system has been mapped up to 5m wide and strikes over 2km, grading up to 39g/t gold in rock chip samples.

The Harden project includes several historic gold mines which produced about 75,000 ounces at 28.6g/t gold up till 1919. There has been no drilling in fresh rock since then at the old Harden gold mine.

At Fontenoy, there is a zone greater than 8km-long of copper and gold anomalism defined in the soil sampling and drilling.

Rockley is located in Ordovician Macquarie Arc geology that also hosts the Cadia Valley and Northparkes mines and, the company says, has the potential to host economic copper-gold porphyry mineralisation similar to that on Newcrest’s ground.

Board brings range of experience

Running the company on a day-to-day basis will be managing director Chris Byrne, who has more than 10 years of experience as an engineer and managing in mining, infrastructure, and logistics sectors in NSW and Queensland. His career focus has been on complex project delivery and management.

Non-executive chairman Dr Carland has 40 years of commercial and investment banking experience, and has previously sat on three mining company boards, including as chairman of Rex Minerals (ASX: RXM). He is currently a non-executive director of Aguia Minerals (ASX: AGR), which is developing copper and phosphate projects in Brazil.

Exploration manager and executive director Thomas Wall is a geologist who has previously held senior roles including at the Peak gold mine at Cobar, NSW, now owned by Aurelia Metals (ASX: AMI).

Other non-executive directors are Matthew Wall, a metals and mining specialist who has held several senior positions including with Rio Tinto (ASX: RIO), and Douglas Menzies who has experience exploring for porphyry copper-gold deposits in Australia, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Laos, Chile, Argentina and Mexico and currently sits on the board of Lachlan Fold Belt explorer Godolphin Resources (ASX: GRL).

Upon listing, board members will between them hold about 28% of Legacy’s shares.