Tip eatlier last year20 Feb 2021 19:30
Earlier off the blocks in June (and in the news on January 12th) was Xtract Resources (LON:XTR), which paid a mere £1.25m seven months ago to acquire the Bushranger project in another significant Australian copper-gold province, New South Wales’ Lachlan copper belt.
But, like Greatland Gold before Havieron, Xtract also had a history of sticking pins into various prospects which haven’t exactly ‘struck gold’, and its rather longer history of the same had instilled more caution into investors. But maybe their caution is abating now.
Xtract Resources – last three years
Because, whereas up to June, Xtract had concentrated on small, medium sized, and near production copper prospects in Zambia and Mozambique, its shares perked up on announcing the acquisition of the rather more prospective Bushranger.
Located in the well-endowed Lachlan Fold Belt, Bushranger’s neighbours include the world-class copper-gold mines operated by Newcrest and Hong Kong listed China Molybdenum Co (CMOC) at their Cadia-Ridgeway and North Parkes mines, together with a potentially world-class deposit at Boda discovered last year by Australia’s Alkane Resources.
Bushranger contains the Racecourse deposit which, so far, has delivered an inferred JORC resource of some 690,000 tonnes copper equivalent, with subsequent drilling showing much wider mineralisation.
As a result, after raising some £650,000 at 1.2p in September and entering into a ‘standby’ further £1m borrowing facility with Sanderson Capital (of the sort which deters some investors) Xxtract announced in early December a drilling programme to test the promising extensions to Racecourse. The first of three diamond (i.e. accurate) drill holes in a first phase, planned to go to some 800m depth, has already (Jan 12th) reached 607 metres ‘with visual copper all the way down from 110 metres’ – a highly promising early result – explaining the shares’ jump.
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