Artemis Resources puts $5.4 million to use on Carlow Castle and Armada in Pilbara

Artemis Resources Ltd (ASX:ARV) (FRA:ATY) (OTC:ARTFF) has updated investors on its pipeline of projects as the company finalises a resource update for its flagship Carlow Castle Gold-Copper-Cobalt Project in the West Pilbara region of Western Australia early this year.

A week ago the company also shared news on an exploration prospect separate to its main group of projects – Armada in the East Pilbara region.

WATCH: Artemis Resources executive director updates on gold and base metals projects

Artemis describes itself as the “first West Pilbara company to consolidate a significant portfolio of base, battery and precious metal assets with a strategically-located processing plant.”

It has 2,400 square kilometres of what it calls “the Pilbara’s best gold, base and battery tenure”.

The company hopes to adopt an adaptive strategy as it aims to be a producer with a long life.

Artemis wrote yesterday in a presentation that its strategy was to “be nimble corporately, explore aggressively and systematically advance our mineral resources to support the transformation of our 100%-owned Radio Hill operation into a long-term producer of gold, base and battery metal concentrates”.

Armada is in the East Pilbara, in Paterson Range territory

The company’s Armada exploration and Carlow Castle resource upgrade and preliminary metallurgical work have been bankrolled with $5.4 million of funding from UK-based institutional group Riverfort Global Capital Limited.

Artemis now has eight exploration targets at the 605-square kilometre Armada prospect on Paterson Range after eight targets were identified with an airborne magnetic survey.

The targets are in a 22-kilometre radius of Greatland Gold PLC’s (LON:GGP) Havieron project where the neighbour intersected 275 metres grading 4.77 g/t gold and 0.61% copper from 459 metres.

Havieron is just 30 kilometres from Newcrest Mining Limited’s (ASX:NCM) (FRA:NMA) (OTCMKTS:NCMGF) 27 million ounce Telfer gold mine.

The Armada ground is also near big miner Rio Tinto, which is rumoured to have made a major copper discovery in Paterson province.

O’Callaghan’s tungsten-copper deposit and Metals X Limited (ASX:MLX) Nifty Copper Mine are also in the neighbourhood.

Paterson Range is about 1,280 kilometres north-northeast of Perth.

Artemis’ eight Armada targets

READ: Artemis Resources secures $5.4 million, commences airborne survey

Artemis executive director Ed Mead told the market a week ago: “The latest airborne survey undertaken by Artemis has identified a large number of very prospective exploration targets surrounding Havieron, with the Kzinti Target as close as only 2.5 kilometres away and on the Greatland/Artemis tenement boundary.

“Artemis surrounds Havieron on three sides and right now we see this project as one of the most exciting in the company’s extensive Pilbara tenement portfolio.”

READ: Artemis Resources identifies 8 new targets from airborne survey

Speaking to Proactive Investors’ Stocktube video channel this week, Mead said “Armada’s prospect is a very exciting project.

“We’ve just completed some airborne magnetic data, and from that we’ve got an initial eight targets, and we’re in the process now of completing further processing and version models.

“Based on what we’ve seen so far, we’ve initiated a gravity survey, which will integrate with the magnetics, and hopefully we’ll be starting to complete that within the next week or so.”

Mead also updated investors on the company’s pipeline.

Artemis’ focus includes Radio Hill in WA’s West Pilbara region, a wholly-owned project that consists of a fully-owned mine and a shuttered 100%-owned plant which the company hopes to reopen.

READ: Artemis Resources releases another new JORC resource

The flagship Carlow Castle project in West Pilbara is another priority for the company which has described it as “the best scalable gold-copper-cobalt deposit in Australia”.

Mead told Stocktube: “Over a period of time we’ve managed to secure some quite exciting projects.

“We are in the Radio Hill plant in Karratha.

“We’ve got a number of very exciting early-stage gold projects, but we’ve also got Carlow Castle which is … a great gold, copper and cobalt project.

“And on the back of that, we’ve got … pegging ground in the Paterson’s Range last year.”

Significant mineral discoveries in Western Australia

READ: Artemis Resources recommences drilling at Carlow Castle, resource update pending

Radio Hill facility is a 0.5 million tonne gold and base metal concentrator 30 kilometres from the Pilbara centre of Karratha.

The West Pilbara facility is the only plant in the Karratha area, and Artemis is at the permitting stage in its bid to reopen the plant.

West Perth-based Artemis released a new JORC resource for the 100%-owned Radio Hill mine last month.

Found in a shallow upper portion, the new nickel-copper-cobalt resource was in the indicated resource and featured 1.15 million tonnes grading 0.52% nickel, 0.73% copper and 277ppm cobalt.

The new resource is about 400 metres from Radio Hill plant.

Mead told the market in December 2018: “Further resource development work is required to determine the optimum means to monetise the project and this work will be reviewed in 2019.”

Artemis holdings in the Pilbara region, near Karratha and Dampier port

READ: Artemis Resources boosts gold resource at Weerianna

At the 100%-owned Carlow Castle project, Artemis restarted drilling last month, as it aimed to define strike extensions to the east and west of the drilling used in its existing resource.

Results from the program were to be combined with near-on 24,000 metres of other exploration data to produce the resource update in the March 2019 quarter.

The company also planned to design a resource development drill program scheduled for the March quarter.

First-pass metallurgical results reported in November 2018 indicated Carlow Castle was amenable to low-cost gravity gold recovery and base metal flotation processes.

Artemis wants to turn Carlow Castle into a mining operation and process its ore at Radio Hill plant.

READ: Artemis Resources first pass met work supports low-cost processing

Shallow trenching at Weerianna Project

Another company project the explorer would like to use as feedstock for the plant is its 80%-owned Weerianna Gold Project, also in the West Pilbara.

Only 35 kilometres by road from Radio Hill, Weerianna has a JORC-compliant Inferred resource of 975,000 tonnes grading 2.0 g/t gold for 62,739 ounces of contained gold.

The resource was last updated in December 2018.

Artemis noted last month further exploration at Weerianna would be ranked, reviewed and prioritised in 2019.

READ: Artemis Resources begins trading on OTCQB Venture Market in the US

Artemis chief executive officer Wayne Bramwell reported on December 19, 2018: “Artemis has drilled 37,000 metres across eight of its projects in the last 12 months to best determine which sites warrant more exploration expenditure.

“Weerianna has only been drilled to an average depth of 69 metres and as a shallow, quartz vein-style gold resource may have the potential to increase in scale with deeper drilling.”

The company’s joint venture with Novo Resources Corp (CVE:NVO) allows the parties to explore for conglomerate and paleo-placer gold deposits on 38 Artemis tenements within 100 kilometres of Karratha.

Artemis believes the JV derisks its gold strategy.

The company also has the Ruth Well high-grade nickel project, a high-grade cobalt-copper-zinc deposit at Whundo and the Munni Munni project.

Munni Munni is 20 kilometres from Radio Hill and hosts conglomerate gold targets and Australia’s largest platinum group elements (PGE) resource.

Artemis earned a 70% share of the joint venture project from Platina Resources Limited (ASX:PGM) (FRA:P4R) (OTCMKTS:PTNUF).

Munni Munni had a historical measured, indicated and inferred mineral resource of 23.6 million tonnes grading 1.1 g/t gold and 1.5 g/t platinum using a cut-off of 1.9 g/t platinum group elements and gold, in 2002 and 2003.

The company is hoping to explore Munni Munni for the ore that sparked a rush in the Pilbara – gold.

Artemis’ quarterly activities report is expected later this month.

— with Danielle Doporto, Tharun George, Berkay Erkhan

Story by ProactiveInvestors