Warriedar Resources unveils major antimony resource and MRE upgrade at Ricciardo deposit

Warriedar Resources (ASX: WA8) has unveiled what it believes is Australia’s largest open-pit antimony resource at its Ricciardo deposit in Western Australia.

Ricciardo’s maiden antimony mineral resource estimate (MRE) has come out at 12.2 million tonnes at 0.5% and the company also reported a 107% increase in the project’s total MRE to 1.96 million ounces of gold equivalent at an average grade of 2.5 grams per tonne.

Antimony’s growing use in the solar and defence sectors in the face of declining production and Chinese export restrictions has seen the critical mineral’s price more than quadruple from around $19,000/t at the beginning of 2024 to around $78,000/t.

Significant open-pit

Chief executive officer Amanda Buckingham said the new results included an open-pit MRE of 11.4Mt at 3.3g/t gold equivalent.

“Through a diligent and systematic evaluation of historical drilling data, we have defined Australia’s largest open-pit antimony resource—from a standing start,” Ms Buckingham said.

“This exercise has been undertaken against a backdrop of surging antimony prices, as the supply constraints and geopolitical dynamics in this market come into sharp focus globally.”

“The next phase of advancing the considerable opportunity at Golden Range is launching dedicated antimony drilling, for the first time ever on this tenure, alongside ongoing metallurgical test work.”

New drilling program

Warriedar plans to carry out that work in parallel with further growing the existing gold resources at Golden Range via drilling through 2025 along the highly prospective 25-kilometre-long ‘Golden Corridor’.

Discovered in the 1990s, the Ricciardo gold deposit is located approximately 300km east of Geraldton on existing mining leases 100%-owned by Warriedar.

It sits approximately 8km south of the Golden Range mill within its namesake group of historic open-pit mines and deposits.

Open-pit mining of the oxide resources commenced in 2001 and the plant produced more than 300,000oz before finally going into ongoing care and maintenance in August 2019.

Antimony intervals

Warriedar undertook an in-depth data review, core sample metallurgical test work and historical pulp analysis at Ricciardo following the receipt of high-grade antimony intervals from a 2024 drilling campaign.

The data review showed that Ricciardo could potentially host significant antimony mineral resources.

Subsequent metallurgical test work confirmed antimony minerals, dominated by stibnite and berthierite, floated well and produced a concentrate grading at approximately 49%.