Peel spreads out as Mallee Bull comes into focus

PEEL Mining has reached an agreement to purchase an exploration licence 20km north of its promising Mallee Bull copper project in New South Wales.

The news immediately followed a Peel presentation at the Resources & Energy Investment Symposium in Broken Hill, during which managing director Rob Tyson aimed for a Mallee Bull resource estimate by early next year.

The company identified the newly acquired Sandy Creek prospect as having a similar geology and structural environment to Mallee Bull, along with coincident magnetic and electromagnetic anomalies including a strong downhole electromagnetic anomaly of about 30 milliseconds time constant. 

Peel said strong geochemical anomalism had also been established at the licence, including high-grade polymetallic historic drilling results.

The deal arranged with private party Weddaria includes the issue of 1.2 million Peel shares with a value equal to $A775,000 and a 1.5% net smelter return royalty.

Yesterday, Tyson told delegates at the Broken Hill symposium that Peel had picked up about 3000sq.km surrounding Mallee Bull, which is part of the broader Gilgunnia project in the state’s copper-rich Cobar region.

“Essentially what we’re hoping is that perhaps we’ve got an analogy of the CSA mine and our rationale for that is when you look at what we know about Cobar-style deposits and compare it to Mallee Bull, it seems to be ticking most of the boxes,” he said. 

“The main features of those deposits are while they can be quite short in strike and modest in width, they’re usually long in the vertical plain and that’s what we’re seeing at Mallee Bull.”

Mineralisation at the project has extended as deep as 650-700m below surface. 

“The prize is that these deposits tend to yield a lot more over their time if you can keep the money up for exploration,” Tyson said.

Peel said Sandy Creek represented a “high priority” target but has so far maintained focus on ongoing work at Mallee Bull. 

Current efforts to fill in the gaps in Mallee Bull data include a continuing drill program, metallurgical testwork and follow-up investigation of a magnetic anomaly. 

“We’ve got about 10 high-priority targets identified to date and we’re looking forward to getting to those over the next six months,” Tyson said. 

“We had a couple of targets we identified earlier and one we drilled late last year, and we had some modest results there but we plan to be a long-term player in the Cobar district.” 

Shares in Peel were trading 1.2% down today at A40c.