Both larger miners and junior companies carry out exploration as they bolster asset potential and discover new ore streams, but statistics show juniors get more bang for their exploration buck than their producing peers.
David A-Izzeddin, technical director of Ballymore Resources – which is exploring a range of emerging gold and base metals projects in Queensland – elaborated in more detail.
“There was an interesting talk yesterday which was looking at the conversion of money put into the ground in exploration versus what you produce in discovery,” he told Australian Resources & Investment at the Mines and Money conference in Melbourne this week.
“And basically, I think the numbers that were quoted were, for every dollar you put in the ground, the average in Australia is to create $1.21 of value through discovery.
“Interestingly, if you break that down into juniors and majors, majors actually convert $1 (of exploration) to 74 cents (of value), and the juniors are the ones who really are carrying it in most cases, they’re converting $1 to $1.69 in value.”
A-Izzeddin explained that because major mining companies naturally have more money due to the profits earned from their producing mines, they are less precise with their exploration programs compared to junior companies.
“As a junior, you’ve got to watch your pennies, and more often than not, you don’t have the money to spend so you don’t spend it, and when you do, you really want to make it count,” he said.
“There’s definitely an important place for the juniors out there exploring and we certainly pride ourselves with taking a lot of care with what we do.
“We’ve been talking about this a lot the last couple of days – we rank our projects, and we’re constantly reassessing results of work we’re doing and making sure we’re getting the most bang for buck for every dollar we spend.”
Ballymore Resources has been making significant progress as it looks to reopen the historic Dittmer gold mine in north Queensland, reporting bonanza gold grades in early May.
This included an intersection of 4.3m at 10.68 grams per tonne (g/t) gold, 1.9g/t silver and 0.12 per cent copper, including 0.35m at 129.43g/t gold, 17.8g/t silver and 1.24 per cent copper.
A-Izzeddin said Ballymore had completed 32 holes for 5703m in its most recent drill program.
“We’ve got some exceptional results (from the drill program) which are demonstrating great continuity over a large area,” he said. “This is the first time Dittmer has ever been drilled, so we think there’s a really exciting starting point here.
“We’ve got a lot more to do in the area, but having completed that (drill program), we are now working towards completing our initial resource estimation for it as well as doing metallurgical test work.”
Ballymore is targeting a near-term reopening of Dittmer, with future production to support the development of its other projects in Queensland, including the Ravenswood, Ruddygore and Mount Molloy projects.
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