New explorer LinQ Minerals is already delivering with the drill bit, as it looks to add to its Gilmore project's global resource of 3.7 million ounces of gold and 1.2 million tonnes of copper in New South Wales' Macquarie Arc.

The company raised A$10 million in a successful IPO in mid-2025 to advance Gilmore, having consolidated a strategic 600sq.km tenement package in the globally recognised porphyry gold-copper province which hosts major operations including Newmont's Cadia and Evolution Mining's Cowal and Northparkes mines.

Executive director Harrison Donner said promising initial exploration had focused on the southern part of Gilmore, where the brownfields Gidginbung gold project and nearby Dam gold-copper deposits are located, which together currently host 1.2Moz of gold and 120,000t of copper.

A stunning result from the first hole drilled at Dam, announced this week, intersected 144m at 1g/t gold-equivalent from 84m which significantly extends the thickness of shallow gold and copper mineralisation. This was a step out hole located 110m along strike south from previous hole DD93GB45, which intersected 167m at 1.87g/t gold-equivalent and verifies 300m strike >100 gram/metres gold-equivalent.

Further potential at Gidginbung

At Gidginbung 600m away, Donner said phase one step-out drilling south of the pit had hit 21m at 2.72g/t gold equivalent and 31m at 2.46g/t gold-equivalent.

"We then stepped it out another 80m to 160 meters, and again, hit 21m at over 3g/t gold-equivalent," he said.

"Overall, the southern zone of the Gilmore project is delivering fantastic high-grade results with good drill widths."

More assays are pending from Dam and Gidginbung, while drilling is about to resume in the southern zone, and start testing targets in Gilmore's central area as well.

LinQ is also planning to start feasibility work on the southern zone to consolidate and update historical work with current commodity prices, with both gold and copper hitting record highs in recent weeks.

Experienced team

The company is benefitting from its a high-calibre leadership team, with decades of financial, technical and project development expertise.

John Holliday, who's credited with discovering Cadia, was recently appointed to join renowned metallurgist Dr Evan Kirby and Geoff Jones, previous head of GR Engineering Services, as a non-executive director.

"One of the benefits of being quite advanced with our exploration and having an extensive data base spanning four decades, is that we know where we want to target the drilling, and allocate capital, so we can be very strategic," Donner said.

In elephant country

LinQ hosted multiple brokers in a site visit late last year and Bell Potter initiated research in December, with a speculative Buy recommendation and valuation of $0.44/share, more than double the current price at the time.

"We see the foundations of a competitive development project that is being overlooked by the market," senior resources analyst David Coates said in a note.

Donner said the buoyant commodity prices and added to the case of fantastic timing for the well-funded explorer.

"We're highly leveraged to both copper and gold," he said.

"There aren't too many copper companies left on the ASX, they're usually housed within much bigger mining companies now.

"But as you can see from our location, we're in very good company with the likes of Cadia, Cowal and Northparkes and Alkane's Boda as well.

"This is really elephant country, and we've got a very strategic piece of real estate with a large existing resource, plus a lot of untapped exploration potential.

"We also have the longest known strike of 40km of continuous porphyry copper and epithermal gold occurrences in the entire Macquarie Arc."

He said investors could expect a strong news flow in the coming months as LinQ looks to deliver both resource growth and further exploration success at Gilmore.