Prodigy Gold hoping to start-up two mines in coming years
A Territory miner has its sights on starting two new gold projects in coming years. Read what they are.
Northern Territory
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A junior Territory miner hopes to deliver a gold project from two Central Australian assets within the next two years.
Tanami-explorer Prodigy Gold, one of 30 companies awarded 38 exploration grants from a $3.9 million funding pool under the NT Government’s Geophysics and Drilling Collaborations program, has its sights on shoring up two major gold projects in coming years.
Prodigy Gold, received a $112,046 grant to drilling program around the gold-rich Central Australian mining province.
Prodigy is working in the same resource-rich region as Newmont’s Granites gold mine, with a focus on establishing the Hyperion gold project and reviving the Old Pirate mine in the Tanami.
Managing director Mark Edwards said exploration grants were important in encouraging junior miners like Prodigy to seek out resources in remote and isolated regions like Central Australia.
“This co-funding is really important to companies our size,” Mr Edwards said. “Diamond drilling is quite expensive so it allows us to do deeper holes and to understand the scale of a deposit like this.
“Small exploration companies are the pointy end of the spear when it comes to exploration. We can be quite efficient, we’re based here in the Northern Territory and there’s only a handful of listed companies that are actually based here.
“One-hundred per cent of our tenements are here in the Northern Territory. These grants are critical for companies like us. Our discoveries will turn into the next mine whether we develop those mines or other companies come in and develop those mines, we can be efficient and nimble and get that work done.
Prodigy has four permanent employees with capacity for up to 15 employees when drilling ratchets up.
“We’re early stage exploration company and as we head into production the employment will go up.
With the spot gold price currently around $5130 an ounce and the successful recommissioning of the Nobles’ Nob goldmine launched last week, Mr Edwards said Prodigy was currently doing assessment work around the prospectivity of Old Pirate.
“We’re in the process of assessing what we’ve got to do there,” he said. “With a gold price over $5000 and we’ve got a resource sitting there, its an opportunity to look at that and develop that.
“It’s on a mineral lease so we’re working through the process of what needs to be done to get approvals under the new EPA Act, and decisions will be made in the near term.”
He said the company has applied for a mining lease at the Hyperion site which could take up to two years to be processed.
“If we didn’t think we could turn it into a mine, why would we be doing what we’re doing? Hyperion, definitely, and Old Pirate’s been mined before at a significantly lower gold price, so there’s great opportunities for us to look at what we can develop with the resources we have.”
Mining at Old Pirate ended in 2015 when the Australian gold price was about $1480 an ounce.
Announcing the exploration grants last week, Mining Minister Gearard Maley said they would help create jobs.
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Originally published as Prodigy Gold hoping to start-up two mines in coming years
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