Iltani Resources is in the market seeking A$5 million at 20c per share to fund exploration over three overlooked projects in the state's north, central and southern regions, hoping to ride into what it hopes will be an extended commodities supercycle.

 

The gold and base metals explorer says two of its project areas have already been proven to be prospective by limited historical exploration.

 

Rio Tinto (as CRA Exploration) explored the Mount Mist and Frewhurst areas in the mid-1990s, with drilling at Frewhurst returning a best intercept of 12m at 1.95% copper and 47 grams per tonne silver from 27m, including 3m at 5.8% and 135gpt from 31m.

 

Frewhurst was worked on a small scale prior to World War II, with processing of secondary copper at Chillagoe. 

 

Holes at Mt Mist returned copper, lead, zinc and silver for CRA, but the was dropped and was not re-examined until TSX-listed Far West Mining picked it up a decade ago with more expansive diamond drilling that uncovered massive sulphide mineralisation with grades up to 1.2% copper and 12.6% zinc, but it ceased work in 2013.

 

Two lenses of high-grade mineralisation remain to be followed up.

 

The leases are now part of Iltani's Northern project, and cover 220sq.km 120km from Mt Garnet, and the search will focus on porphyry and breccia-related copper-gold deposits and base metal sulphide deposits.

 

Its Southern gold project covers areas of known silver and gold, with extensive small scale historical workings north of Brisbane, where the early focus will be on Mount Langan and Nukinenda with costeaning of the Nukinenda Dyke returning up to 6m at 5.6gpt. 

 

Mt Langan hasn't been explored since the 1980s, but Iltani believes it is a high sulphidation epithermal target, and Nukinenda hasn't been touched since 1991.

 

Its third project is Rookwood, outside Rockhampton in central Queensland, which is considered prospective for volcanogenic-hosted massive sulphide base metals deposits.

 

Zenith Minerals controls the northern part of the Rookwood Volcanic Belt, including the Sulphide City project that covers the only known VHMS cluster in the Develin Creek area, which is set to be spun-out as a targeted explorer. 

 

Iltani believes its area in the south is prospective to find copper-rich VHMS deposits.

 

Garner is joined at Iltani by non-executive chair Anthony Reilly, a veteran resource and corporate finance executive.