Chalice Mining (ASX:CHN) has one of the richest mineral deposits in the world, located just 70 km north of Perth. Yet, not a single global major or investor is interested, except at usurious rates that would destroy its long-term value to both Chalice and Australia.
The Gonneville palladium, platinum, gold, copper, and cobalt find, with an estimated resource of over a billion tonnes, has been largely overlooked by stock market investors and analysts—many of whom were enthusiastically promoting it in 2022 and 2023.
As a result, Chalice has been forced to explore for gold and copper in its highly prospective West Yilgarn areas. The company reports it has found several promising sites while continuing to advance the Gonneville mine project towards the pre-feasibility stage.
In a statement to the ASX on Tuesday, Chalice announced it has identified two “significant new gold targets” at the 4,600-square-kilometre Barrabarra project, east of Geraldton in a region of WA typically known for its iron ore and vanadium deposits.
Chalice revealed that soil geochemical surveys at Barrabarra have identified the Recherche West and Warspite gold prospects, an area of WA where Chalice has been exploring for the past three years.
Recherche West is a 15 km long east-west trending gold soil geochemical anomaly spanning a previously unrecognised greenstone belt, while Warspite extends 2 km and boasts similar characteristics.
“The newly identified areas are almost entirely undrilled, highlighting the gold-copper prospectivity of the region,” Chalice stated in Tuesday’s presentation to a mining conference.
“The discovery of the Gonneville deposit effectively unlocked a new mineral province along the western margin of the Yilgarn Craton—one that is still at an early stage in its discovery history,” said Chalice CEO Alex Dorsch in Tuesday’s statement. “Building on the Gonneville discovery, Chalice’s exploration team has made solid progress in identifying new areas with strong discovery potential.
“This work has culminated in the delineation of two new very large gold targets, one of which is hosted within an unrecognised greenstone belt and another in the Koolanooka greenstone belt. Both are planned for drilling later this year.”
Dorsch added that the company aims to explore Recherche West and Warspite in the hope of making further breakthrough discoveries.
“Given the size of the deposits found to date in the West Yilgarn—Gonneville with more than 17 Moz PGE (platinum group elements)-gold and Boddington with more than 40 Moz of gold—we believe this low-cost exploration is clearly worth pursuing in parallel with ongoing pre-feasibility work on the Gonneville project,” Dorsch said.
Chalice is planning aircore drill programs at Barrabarra in the fourth quarter of this year, with timing subject to heritage clearance, government approvals, and landholder consents.
The company says it is continuing to advance its Gonneville pre-feasibility study, which is focused on a staged, high-grade development scenario to mine the higher-grade areas of this massive series of deposits.