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LITCHFIELD MINERALS LTD (LMS) - Unveiling Mineral Riches: Managing Director Matthew Pustahya on Exploration Successes, Promising Finds, and Cutting-Edge VTEM Surveys

August 22, 2024 • Andrew Musgrave

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Curious about the latest breakthroughs in mineral exploration? This episode of ASX Briefs has you covered as we sit down with Matthew Pustahya, the Managing Director of Litchfield Minerals, for an in-depth update on their ambitious exploration projects in the Northern Territory. Matthew shares the triumphs and trials from recent drilling activities at Silver King, Copper Flats, and Mount Irene, and reveals the promising finds of lead, zinc, and silver at Silver King. Discover what technical successes they achieved and the challenges that remain, all while gaining a deeper understanding of how their geological insights are shaping future endeavors.

Get ready for some exciting news as Matthew pulls back the curtain on Litchfield Minerals' upcoming tenement-wide VTEM survey, set to kick off in August. This cutting-edge electromagnetic survey aims to detect massive sulfides down to 200 meters, potentially unearthing significant mineral deposits. Learn about the fertile sulfide systems identified through their diamond drilling campaign and how these findings are steering their exploration strategy. Whether you're an industry veteran or just curious about the world of mineral exploration, this episode is packed with valuable insights and future plans that underscore Litchfield Minerals' dedication to uncovering critical resources.

Andrew Musgrave:

Welcome back to ASX Briefs, and today we welcome back Matthew Pu, the Managing Director of Litchfield Minerals, a company that's focused on the exploration and development of critical mineral resources, particularly in the Northern Territory of Australia. Matthew, thanks for joining us again and welcome back to the podcast.

Matthew Pustahya:

Thank you very much for having me, Andrew. It's good to be back.

Andrew Musgrave:

Okay, we last spoke a few months ago and there's been some exploration updates at Silver King, Mount Irene and Copper Flats, so can you bring our listeners up to date on the speed of progress at these projects?

Matthew Pustahya:

Yeah, no worries, look, we really hit the ground running at the start. You know, early on in the year, straight after our IPO, we managed to drill around 1,800 metres of diamond and RC drilling. We did six holes at Silver King, two at Copper Flats and four at Mount Irene. We had a bit of success at Silver King, which was really good. We noticed we were getting a lot of massive sulphide within our well, anything from stringer to semi-massive to massive sulphide throughout our core. The first three holes was a lot of the iron sort of sulfides which was pyrite and pyrotype. But given what was that surface, we kind of knew the system would deliver some base metals. And then in our fourth hole we managed to get a nice intersection of massive sulfide which had up to 20% lead in some places but on average of was around 17 metres at 2.5% lead, 1% zinc, 15 gram per tonne silver. So really interesting stuff. So Silver King was quite successful In terms of Copper Flats.

Matthew Pustahya:

Copper flats was probably more of a technical success. Basically, Copper Flats is next door to one of our other deposits and there looked to be a sister reef there through some of our geophysical interp. And yes, look, we looked to drill that and we did drill it, we intersected it, but unfortunately it was a bit of a barren sort of system. And then Mount Irene. So, Mount Irene, we drilled the known outcrop. We got about five to seven metres of mineralisation through the known outcrop it's probably a little bit too thin. But we did notice some other sections which might have been feeding the outcrop through some IP.

Matthew Pustahya:

One missed probably nothing in it. One hole has a huge IP anomaly next to it and unfortunately, because of too much water within the hole itself, the IC rig just wouldn't get down as deep as we needed to go, which was 220. We only got to 168, but we're seeing some really promising things within that course. So look, Mount Irene, semi-successful, and we think there's a nice anomaly there which we need to go back and draw back further once we do some further work over that, which is probably some more IP and some VTEM. So in terms of the exploration update just on those three areas, that would be it. But look, we had some early success and you know we're looking to get some further success in the future.

Andrew Musgrave:

Okay, and with any drilling program, obviously you gather a lot of data. So what have some of the key learnings been so far from the exploration that you've done?

Matthew Pustahya:

Well, the main one is we had diamond campaign. We're starting to understand geology a lot better and sort of how it sits and you know the strategy of it. So it's really helping us marry up some good intel with some of our geophysical data. So I suppose that would be the key learning from our drilling campaign today. The other key learning is our system is very fertile, so we are seeing a lot of sulfides. We're seeing anything from, as I said, stringer to disseminated, to semi-massive to massive sulfide. So we know our system can produce decent bodies and because of that we've decided to do a VTEM, a tenement-wide VTEM campaign. VTEM is an electromagnetic campaign which basically is designed to pick up any massive sulfides down to about 200 metres, and we're doing one penumal wide, which is quite a large survey especially for VTEM. So we're quite excited to sort of see what that will bring up and you know that's going to start next Monday, so very excited about that.

Andrew Musgrave:

Okay, and with the program that you've done so far, obviously you encounter challenges along the way. So what are some of the challenges you face so far which you hope to rectify in the future?

Matthew Pustahya:

Yeah, it's a good question. There's a couple of them, to be honest. So, look, we're a relatively new IPO and because of that, you know when we'll take some money off people and presenting. We said we'd drill immediately and because of that, we got out out there and drilled immediately.

Matthew Pustahya:

However, there was a very large rain event, um, that hit central Australia there was actually two, and I think we probably pushed a little bit too early and and we fought sort of some you know some, some wayward infrastructure and we had to rebuild it. So I mean there was some extra costs. So I mean, in in the future we probably won't push as quickly as we did to, you know, after a massive rain event, if one ever happens again. Um, so that was very good, the um. That was a very good learning on me.

Matthew Pustahya:

The second learning is that you know everything around Central Australia is a little bit more expensive, so planning is very key. So we did do some planning very well, which is good, and because of some of our mistakes that we made through our planning, we've actually found some very good suppliers and some very good people within our local area that can supply us with equipment that's needed at a much better cost. So I mean, you know, through our mistakes we've actually found some benefit, which is really good, and that's part of the process. And a third biggest key learning was probably we needed a full-time geo on this project, just because we've got such a vast amount of land and there's different geological models that we need to consider. So we've also resurrected, you know. So we've also solved that problem by getting on a full-time geo to help us out.

Andrew Musgrave:

Okay, and if we look at the upcoming exploration activities, what are some of the things that shareholders can expect over the course of the rest of the year?

Matthew Pustahya:

Yeah, cool. So we just completed two large gravity surveys over an area called Patmungula and a new area called Damundzi. They've been completed and announced to market last week. Very excited about those. What's going to come next is a geochemical testing over our granites and surrounding areas of the granites for Uranium Marie. We were out here a couple of weeks ago doing our first campaigns through those areas. We're out here again this week on site currently completing those campaigns through those areas. We're out here again this week on site currently completing those campaigns, which is good.

Matthew Pustahya:

Then we've got a lithostructural interp of our Mount Doreen tenement. The lithostructural interp is basically a structural interpretation of the geology and all the faults that exist and where the good dilation zones are and where the specific targets should be for different types of metals or rare earths or minerals, et cetera, et cetera. We hope that we should be able to present that data to the market within the next week and a half and it's looking really good at the moment, so pretty excited about that. We've got our VTEM survey, which is kicking off on Monday, which is very exciting because it can be an absolute game changer for our targeting expensive but well worth the money given what we saw out of the Silver King holes and what we know about our next door neighbours down at Mount Hardy where they're drilling out the massive sulphides and after that we're going to do some basement sampling, basically going to test the fertility of some of these targets we've done, and then hopefully we'll get out again this year and be able to plant some RC holes around the place.

Andrew Musgrave:

Okay, Matt. Well, that's good to get the update on the company. There's obviously plenty happening on the ground, which is very exciting, and we look forward to further updates in the upcoming months.

Matthew Pustahya:

All right, perfect. I appreciate it.

Andrew Musgrave:

That concludes this episode of ASX Briefs. Don't forget to subscribe and we look forward to catching you on our next episode.