"Mafic intrusive units are super rare": Terrain Minerals (ASX:TMX) talks nickel, gallium and gold

“Mafic intrusive units are super rare”: Terrain Minerals (ASX:TMX) talks nickel, gallium and gold

Terrain Minerals Limited (ASX:TMX) Executive Director Justin Virgin discusses the company's promising projects in Western Australia.

Peter Milios: I'm Peter Milios from the Finance News Network, and today I'm talking with Terrain Minerals (ASX:TMX). Terrain Minerals, trading under the ASX code "TMX" with a market capitalisation of approximately $5m, is a West Australian-based minerals exploration company focused on the world-class mineral provinces in WA. Terrain is actively looking for opportunities within other states of Australia and internationally. We have with us today Justin Virgin, who is the Managing Director of Terrain Minerals. Justin, welcome to the network. Thanks for coming in.

Justin Virgin: Yeah, thank you, Peter. Yeah, fantastic. Thanks for having us.

Peter Milios: So, Justin, just looking at your gallium mineralisation at the Smokebush Project, there's findings that span over nine by two kilometres. Can you explain what this means for the project and what the future holds?

Justin Virgin: Gallium's actually a metal, it's not a rare earth. You know, it's a non-LME product, so it's a very opaque metal, like a lot of these specialty metals. But there's a major demand for them. China controls 98 per cent of the market, and basically it's in semiconductors, in computer chips, and it's all the new-generational stuff that if we don't have it, there is no AI, there's no quantum computing. The military complex, radars, missiles, fifth-generation fighter planes are all using gallium chips and circuitry. Most people don't know… Like the LED lighting that we've got in this room here is not possible without gallium LEDs, so it's a very important metal.

We were already on the gallium bandwagon from our Lort River Project down in Esperance. But what we're seeing at Larin's Lane is double the grade, zones up to 64m wide, 70 per cent of the holes have got cracking big wide intersections in them. So I guess low-cost mining because we're basically in sand and it's just a matter of network going forward, which we've started to do. There's a JORC exploration target getting calculated at the moment, which will paint a bit of a theme on the size of it, which we can come out to the market, as well as what we do next to enlarge it to bring it to an actual JORC-compliant resource. So, we're very excited.

Peter Milios: And let's shift to the Wildflower gold prospect. The Wildflower drilling program is set to begin with 41 holes planned. Can you share what potential you see for gold discoveries at this prospect and how it ties into the overall Smokebush project?

Justin Virgin: We've got 15m at almost 1.5g a tonne from 10m down, which isn't too bad a grade in this sort of price environment. It's all under cover. And that's at Wildflower. There's a nice big plume there of soil signature which hasn't really been followed up properly, so we're going to do a couple lines of air core across it to try and identify the way it sits and if it is actually bigger.

And also at Cota, from memory there's about 4m at one, never followed up. So the idea is go and have a quick look at it, get some numbers back reasonably quickly, and then decide, "Do we go back with an RC rig and test the hard rock potential once we get a little bit more of an idea?". And our Smokebush and Lightning target we believe has been drilled the wrong way. We'll probably wait for an RC rig and we'll test depth potential extensions, which we're seeing at Warriedar to the north and a few other deposits close by.

So, it's an interesting little gold story. There's a lot of mills nearby, so you don't need a lot to actually get into production.

Peter Milios: And the recent airborne VTEM survey has identified five high-priority bedrock sulphide conductors, two of which are within the Lort River eye feature. So, can you explain the significance of this feature and its potential for nickel and copper deposits?

Justin Virgin: If everyone knows the Nova-Bollinger Sirius story, from five cap to a 1.8 billion takeover by Independence, whose Nova-Bollinger project is still making a lot of money… So I guess with a lot of feedback we've had is the market has said, "Oh, another eye story." Well, this is not another eye story and I guess we need to differentiate. Nova-Bollinger was a mafic intrusive unit. So, basically, a volcano has almost made it to surface, punching up. And it typically drags the goodies from the earth core up with it, and that's what the sulphide targets hopefully are. So, there's only been three ultramafic intrusives found on the Albany-Fraser belt. We have one of them, which is a big coup for us, just 50 kays out of Esperance. There's been hundreds of millions of dollars spent trying to find these things. We're in the southern part of the belt that's on farming land and no one's really looked. I think that's the truth.

Southern Geoscience have ticked off that it is a mafic intrusive or ultramafic intrusive unit. We've sort of jumped the process a little bit because most people would drill to see what type of rock type it is, but we've got one of the leading geophysicists in the country signed off telling us what it is. And we looked at the government survey, and we actually picked up a conductor sitting on our eye, and that was enough for us to take that leap. You know, it's a couple hundred thousand dollars spend to do a VTEM survey. It's a big leap for a junior. So, this is a very unique geological setting globally. You don't see these things around. And we've got all the right indications that there's something there. It's just is it economic or not? That's the question. It's sulphide conductors.

Peter Milios: And last question, Justin — what do the next six to 12 months look like for the company?

Justin Virgin: I think it's an exciting ride, the next six months, especially with our Lort River. If that comes in, we really could be on to something substantially for our shareholders. You know, I'd like to say that this is the best nickel target currently in Australia or in the world. It probably is. You know, someone show me a better one. We've got a mafic intrusive with conductors sitting on it that is untested. Mafic intrusive units are super rare. And we've got one, the third one on the belt.

Our gallium's advancing. And China did turn off the gallium market last August, which sent alarm bells. In peacetime, there's about six months' supply. So if someone turns it off, you know, a bit of a scary… There is no substitute. It's not like there's antimony and there's lead, there's a substitute for a lot of things. There is no substitute for gallium.

We've got a nice pipeline of projects. You know, we're not a one-donkey race. And a couple of our donkeys look like they could be thoroughbreds.

Peter Milios: Justin, thank you so much for your time.

Justin Virgin: Thank you. Really appreciate it. It's lovely to be with you, and hopefully we can do it again.