Hillgrove Resources

Hillgrove Resources (ASX:HGO) is developing the Kanmantoo Underground in South Australia which is a near-term, low capital intensive copper / gold mine positioned to take advantage of rising copper prices that has potential to increase mining inventory through an ongoing drilling program.  In addition, Hillgrove offers an exploration pipeline within 5km of the existing processing and tailings storage infrastructure which enables relatively fast and low-cost conversion from exploration to cash flow, and exploring larger scale porphyry opportunities in an area regarded as one of the most prospective porphyry regions in Australia.    

Kanmantoo Underground

The Kanmantoo Underground is a near-term, low capital copper production opportunity in a Tier 1 jurisdiction that enjoys strong community support.  The Kanmantoo Underground is a fully permitted operation with all processing and tailings storage infrastructure is in place, and ore lodes within 40m of the decline portal which facilitate a fast low capex start-up.

A small Underground Resource was released in December 2020, since which time a further 11km of drilling has been completed which is expected to materially increase Resource.  The drilling demonstrates that the copper lodes mined in the open pit continue for at least 300m below the base of the open pit and are open along strike which provides opportunities to further increase the Resource through the ongoing drilling program.

Unique to Kanmantoo is the latent capacity in the processing plant which operated at 3.6Mtpa from 2011 to 2020.  Rising copper prices provide an opportunity to optimse the head grade in the Underground to further increase mineable inventory and annual production potential at very low incremental operating cost and no additional capital.

Exploration

An Exploration Target for the Kanmantoo Underground of 8-16Mt, 1-2%Cu, 0.2-0.4 g/t Au provides opportunity to increase mineable inventory with further drilling.

In addition to the Kanmantoo Underground, Hillgrove is actively exploring three advanced exploration targets within 5 km of the processing plant, and a further 5,652km2 in South Australia’s southeast targeting large scale deposits within the highly prospective USGS and GA Porphyry Tract which includes the Stavely Cu-Au-Mo Porphyry.