Red Mountain Mining Advances Armidale Antimony-Gold Project with Continued Strong Results

Red Mountain Mining (ASX: RMX) has reported consistently strong results from its wholly-owned Armidale antimony-gold project in the Southern New England Orogen (SNEO) of northeast New South Wales.

The company acquired the project in November and has since conducted rock-chip, soil and auger sampling at the Oaky Creek and East Hills prospects in the northern part of the tenement, along with initial rock-chip sampling at the Horsley Station gold prospect to the south

Many view the SNEO region as Australia’s premier antimony province, with 250 historical antimony occurrences in hydrothermal quartz veins, breccias and stockworks, often with associated gold and/or tungsten mineralisation.

Initial Exploration Strategy

Red Mountain’s initial strategy at Armidale revolves around the investigation of historical antimony-gold discoveries associated with major and minor structures of the prospective Peel Fault system.

Armidale is located across 400 square kilometres of the SNEO nearby to the Peel Fault and hosts a similar style of orogenic antimony-gold mineralisation to Australia’s largest antimony deposit at Hillgrove (owned by Larvotto Resources, ASX: LRV).

Larvotto had a market capitalisaton of $5.6 million in December 2023 when it acquired the Hillgrove mine out of administration, which has since surged to more than $700m following a recent takeover bid by mining giant United States Antimony Corporation.

Assays Still Pending

The majority of assays from exploration at Oaky Creek and East Hills are still pending, however results sofar have been highly encouraging.

These include antimony-in-soils assays at Oaky Creek of up to 333 parts per million with rock-chip values of up to 39.3% antimony and 1.09 grams per tonne gold, and best rock-chip assays from East Hills and Horsley Station of 9.9% antimony and up to 0.25g/t gold, respectively.

Red Mountain is planning a similar program of hand auger soil and rock-chip sampling over the Oaky Creek North soil anomaly to define prospective drill targets.

Critical Minerals Agreement

This week, the US and Australia signed a critical minerals framework agreement committing US$3 billion over the next six months to support new mining, refining and processing projects in both countries.

Red Mountain said it was it a good position to respond to this opportunity through continued aggressive exploration of the Armidale project and the rapid progression of the US-based Yellow Pine and Utahantimony-gold projects.

Approximately 90% of global antimony production is controlled by China, Russia, and Tajikistan, creating significant supply risks for western nations such as Australia and the US, where the metal is a critical component for armament manufacture.

With China’s recent export bans resulting in acute supply shortages and an escalation of antimony prices to US$60,000 per tonne, the US government has issued emergency declarations and mobilised significant funding to improve domestic production.