Redbank Copper discovers cobalt near Northern Cobalt’s Stanton project in the NT

Redbank Copper (ASX: RCP) has discovered cobalt after a review of its tenements in the Northern Territory, which are in proximity to Northern Cobalt’s (ASX: N27) rapidly advancing Stanton cobalt deposit, part of its Wollogorang project, in the region.

With 1,050 square kilometres of tenements in the Northern Territory and the surging cobalt price which has hovered around US$80,000 per tonne since January, Redbank Copper claimed it was timely to undertake a review of its tenements for cobalt prospectivity.

The review included exploring geochemical databases and previous drilling records and Redbank Copper identified about 50sq km within its tenements that hosted anomalous cobalt values, with around 50 parts per million cobalt extracted from stream samples.

Additionally, high grade cobalt values were found on Redbank Copper’s GC1 and GC2 prospects, which are part of the Copperado tenement, with pXRF readings returning 2% cobalt and 0.8%, 7.5% cobalt and 29.7% copper.

To firm up the targets, Redbank has planned a helicopter-supported electromagnetic and ground gravity surveys.

Redbank Copper’s tenements are situated within the South McArthur River Basin, with the Redbank project comprising a resource estimate of 6.2 million tonnes grading 1.5% copper for 96,000t of contained copper.

Open pit mining was undertaken at the Sandy Flat deposit within the tenements from 1994 and 1996. The tenements were also subject to smaller scale mining between 1916 and 1960.

Northern Cobalt’s Stanton deposit

Northern Cobalt’s Stanton deposit is about 50km north of Redbank Copper’s tenements in the Northern Territory and Redbank Copper purports the mineral formation at both projects is related.

Stanton has a current inferred resource of 500,000t grading 0.17% cobalt, 0.09% nickel and 0.11% copper.

In January, Northern Cobalt started a scoping study into developing Stanton and plans to publish an updated resource by the end of this month. A further resource upgrade is pencilled in for the end of June.

Commenting on Stanton’s potential back in January, Northern Cobalt managing director Michael Schwarz said, “The Stanton cobalt deposit is only the beginning in the region for Northern Cobalt.”

“As our geology team begins to unlock the exploration space of the metalliferous Gold Creek Volcanics, we see the potential for multiple examples of cobalt mineralisation in the region,” Mr Schwarz added.

With such strong faith in the region’s cobalt prospectivity, Northern Cobalt pegged up more ground around Wollogorang in January with the company’s landholding in the region totalling 4,986sq km.

Wollogorang stretches throughout the territory’s top end in the east and hugs the Queensland border. Northern Cobalt has also lodged applications for a further two tenements across the Queensland border.

After closing the day up almost 20% at A$0.05 yesterday, Redbank Copper’s share price was unchanged in early morning trade.