Barry FitzGerald: Hammer returns to take a swing at one of WA’s hottest gold prospects

Hammer Metals has a handy bounty of QLD copper and molybdenum, but this famous WA gold ground has ‘Garimpeiro’ Barry FitzGerald intrigued.

Garimpeiro revisits the famous Bronzewing South stoush, where Hammer Metals could finally deliver on three decades of golden promise. Pic: Supplied/Stockhead

“Garimpeiro” columnist Barry FitzGerald has covered the resources industry for 35 years. Now he’s sharing the benefits of his experience with Stockhead readers.

Investors would be hard pressed to find a modestly capitalised junior explorer with stronger newsflow in coming months than Hammer Metals (ASX:HMX).

There’s plenty of potential game changing stuff too for a company that has a hard asset backstop to its current $26.6 million market cap at 3c a share.

The backstop is the Kalman copper-gold-molybdenum-rhenium project in the Mt Isa region. It is a 429,000t copper equivalent resource which Garimpeiro reckons more than covers Hammer’s market cap.

It will be developed one day, probably wrapped into a consolidated copper play, with its moly component coming into its own following China – the world’s main producer of the steel alloying agent – moving it into its basket of export-controlled metals.

But enough on Kalman. It is nice to have but it is on the exploration front that Hammer could generate some near-term excitement.

It has got loads of exploration results to come from exploration joint ventures in the Mt Isa district with big names like Sumitomo and South 32 where the targets are very much of the tier-1 type, as well as a bunch of results from 100% owned project in and around the district.

Again, newsflow from all the activity (completed and planned) will be as good as it gets for a junior explorer with Hammer’s modest market cap. Leverage to success is extreme, remembering there is always the backstop of Kalman should a meaningful discovery prove to be elusive this time around.

But wait, there’s more!

In a back to the future moment, Hammer is returning to the Yandal gold belt near Wiluna in Western Australia, specifically its Bronzewing South project next door to Northern Star Resources' (ASX:NST) Bronzewing project.

The latter was acquired by the gold major in 2019, and is a former producer of more than three million ounces of gold.

There was a time when Bronzewing South was hotly contested exploration ground thanks to its proximity to Bronzewing, discovered by a joint venture between Joe Gutnick’s Great Central Mines (GCM) and prospecting billionaire Mark Creasy in 1992.

Competing applications for the Bronzewing South ground prompted the Mining Warden to decide the matter in a ballot, much to the annoyance of Creasy in his private capacity. He took the dispute all the way to the High Court.

No luck there for him, with the Bronzewing South ground eventually going to a no longer with us company in 1997. In the meantime, drilling by GCM in 1995 identified a high-grade mineralised zone (2m at 20.8g/t gold at 450m depth) just inside the boundary from Bronzewing South.

Newmont Corporation (ASX:NEM) (it acquired Bronzewing when it took over Normandy Mining in 2002, with Normandy having acquired GCM in 1999), followed up the hit in 2003 drilling, targeting a position 150m lower than the GCM intercept.

Hidden gems

The drilling confirmed the continuation of mineralisation at lower grades. But Newmont later exited the project, which changed hands a couple of times before Hammer picked it up in 2019 and drilled a single RC hole down to 135m.

At 120m, it hit 1m at 1.2 g/t gold, which demonstrated the zone was present. But Hammer got distracted at the time by copper exploration success in the Mt Isa region and hasn’t been back since.

The zone literally starts on the tenement boundary less than 150m from the original Bronzewing discovery.

So it could be a nice deep hidden zone that has effectively had no drilling into it whatsoever. That’s the focus of a drilling program planned for late June/early July by Hammer. In the words of Hammer managing director Dan Thomas, “we’re going to give it a good shake.”

The views, information, or opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the columnist and do not represent the views of Stockhead. Stockhead does not provide, endorse or otherwise assume responsibility for any financial product advice contained in this article.

Originally published as Barry FitzGerald: Hammer returns to take a swing at one of WA’s hottest gold prospects