WAU defines over 4km of new gold targets at Bullabulling

Our WA gold Investment WA Gold (ASX: WAU) just defined nine new drill targets at its Bullabulling project, next door to $2.1BN Minerals 260's 6.2M ounce gold deposit.

On this asset, it appears that some of the mineralisation from Minerals 260’s asset could extend into the $16M capped WAU’s.

The targets from today came out of a Sub-Audio Magnetics survey (ground geophysics that maps conductive zones hidden under cover) across WAU's Bullabulling North ground.

(source)

All up there are nine anomalies that add up to over 4km of strike to test.

All of them sit on the two structures WAU is chasing - the shear zone interpreted to run north from Mineral 260's deposit into WAU's ground, and the regional ultramafic contact.

Some sit right on top of the low-grade end-of-hole gold hits from WAU's first round of drilling here, which we covered in August.

So this gives WAU coincident geophysics and gold anomalies to aim at - although conductors can come from things other than gold, so only drilling into these will tell if there’s economic quantities of gold here.

WAU is now ranking the targets ahead of deeper RC drilling, planned once the current program at its 518k ounce Abercromby project wraps up (WAU’s other project, more on this further down).

Minerals 260 has seen plenty of activity of late. Back in February it signed a royalty agreement for $170M in funding plus $50M in direct investment. (source)

Then in May it swallowed up control of most of the land in the area that wasn’t controlled by WAU:

(source)

Then it upgraded the resource, released a PFS that demonstrated a $2.5BN NPV (source), began pre-mining works, secured $200M in additional funding from Franco Nevada and then raised $250M.

So Minerals 260 appears to be well backed and moving pretty fast here.

WAU has the only remaining strategic land in the area, and perhaps the most interesting given the proximity to the Minerals 260 resource just a small distance over the border.

We went deeper into this back in June (before some of the updates listed just above): Surrounded. The 2nd biggest gold company in the world pushing money into WAU’s neighbourhood

Some interesting developments near WAU’s other project too…

WAU also holds the Abercromby project in WA (with a 518koz JORC resource estimate AND drilling currently underway), near the Wiluna processing facility.

Wiluna Mining is now nearing an IPO to relist on the ASX and bring this asset back into production.

Just last week there was this article from The Australian on the upcoming IPO - Wiluna Mining nears $180m ASX float (it quoted “hoping to list by October 22”).

This is of interest to WAU because it holds a non-binding MOU with Wiluna Mining to process WAU’s ore at Wiluna’s facility.

WAU had a scoping study on this plan released earlier in the year, that showed:

1. Pre-production capital requirement of just ~$8M for start up
2. A pre-tax NPV of $205M - $253M
3. A Stage 1 production target of ~114,000 ounces of gold
4. Forecast pre-tax cashflow of ~A$270M

This economic scoping study was done with a base case gold price of A$6,000/oz, which is near the current gold price of ~US$4,165/oz (~A$5,990/oz).

WAU also got drilling underway here in late August for a planned 54 holes covering ~7,200m, targeting the planned open pit area, to support a maiden Ore Reserve.

(source)

Wiluna has had a bit of a checkered history, it holds a large resource, however a few owners over the years that have struggled to make it work from the underground mining operation.

So we think that once Wiluna is relisted, WAU could provide a more reliable source of feed for the mill.

Remembering that the scoping study focused on a simple near surface, open pit operation that could be trucked a few kms to the Wiluna processing plant.

This is how close away WAU’s project here is to Wiluna:

(source)

So once Wiluna is listed, we are hopeful there could be some progress on the processing plan WAU has with Wiluna.

We went deeper into the WIluna opportunity for WAU on the back of drill results released from here in August: WAU: A Positive Surprise...

What we want to see next from WAU

Abercromby project - WAU’s 518k ounce gold JORC resource estimate

On this project, here are the milestones we are tracking:

• ✅ Phase 1 drilling at Abercromby
• ✅ Phase 1 assay results
• ✅ Phase 2 drilling at Abercromby (~7,200m of diamond drilling underway)
• 🔲 Abercromby resource upgrade (WAU is targeting 1M+ ounces)
• 🔲 Maiden Ore Reserve + feasibility study workstreams
• 🔲 Binding toll treatment deal (converting the Wiluna MoU into something firm)
• 🔲 Final Investment Decision (targeted for 2027)

Bullabulling project (next door to $2.1BN Minerals 260)

Here are the milestones we are tracking for this project:

• ✅ Bullabulling maiden drill program assays (46 holes completed, results due “early August”)
• ✅ Sub-Audio Magnetics survey at Bullabulling (completed with 9 targets identified) (source)
• 🔲 Drilling recommencing to follow up on the targets generated