Kristie Batten: What attracted mine-finder Julian Hanna to gold explorer Artemis Resources

Pilbara gold explorer Artemis Resources has a new leader whose mine finding pedigree augurs well as it targets the next Hemi.

Artemis Resources is targeting "multiples of kilometres" of untested ground around its Carlow gold resource. Pic: Supplied/Stockhead

One of Australia’s top mining journalists, Kristie Batten writes for Stockhead every week in her regular column placing a watchful eye on the movers and shakers of the small cap resources scene.

Artemis Resources (ASX:ARV) has a fresh exploration strategy heading into 2025 under the guidance of newly appointed managing director Julian Hanna.

Hanna, a geologist, was behind the transformation of Western Areas – which was acquired by IGO (ASX:IGO) for $1.3 billion in 2022 – from an explorer into a leading Australian nickel producer.

He joined MOD Resources in 2013 and oversaw the discovery of copper deposits in the Kalahari Copper Belt in Botswana.

MOD was acquired by leading ASX copper producer Sandfire Resources (ASX:SFR) in 2019, which has since developed the former MOD ground into the Motheo operation. Hanna remained with Sandfire for two years after the close of the deal as director, growth.

Hanna started consulting to Artemis last year and was appointed as technical director in December.

Last month, former Artemis executive director George Ventouras announced his resignation, opening the door for Hanna’s appointment as managing director.

Three weeks into his new role, Hanna told Stockhead he was attracted to Artemis’ strong team and Pilbara project portfolio.

“There's a lot of work to do, but I think it's really quite an exciting company,” he said.

“It's had such a history, with long, lasting and loyal shareholders, and at the same time, there is still so much opportunity on the current projects that the company has.”

Artemis' new MD Julian Hanna sees untapped potential in its Pilbara gold prospects. Pic: Artemis

Gold in focus

Artemis has several projects across the Pilbara, but the 2025 focus will be its Karratha gold project.

There has been increased interest in the gold potential of the Pilbara following De Grey Mining's (ASX:DEG) Hemi discovery in 2020.

De Grey has defined resources of 13.6 million ounces of gold at 1.4 grams per tonne.

Hanna refers to the district as the Northern Pilbara gold province. Hemi sits at the eastern end, while Artemis’ ground is at the western end of a 200km east-west structural corridor.

“The big gold deposits seem to occur where you start getting disruptions to those big regional structures – no matter where you are in the world, that's where the gold camps occur,” he said.

“Hemi’s got it in spades and we think we've got a slice of the action at the western end of the belt, so we're quite excited about what we have, actually.”

Artemis’ Carlow deposit has a resource of 8.74 million tonnes at 2.5 grams per tonne gold equivalent for 704,000 ounces of AuEq, or 374,000oz of gold, 64,000t of copper and 8000t of cobalt.

“It's quite a long deposit. There's … multiple stacked lodes that make up that deposit,” Hanna said.

“It's completely open at depth and down-plunge, particularly to the east, and that's one of our initial targets we plan to test to see if we can tease out some of the high grades further east from where drilling left off.”

Drilling about to kick off

After spending 2024 doing “old school” geology work, including detailed geological mapping, geochemistry, soil sampling and rock chipping, Artemis is ready to drill.

“At the end of 2024 in December there, we were lucky to raise $4 million in a fairly ordinary market at the time go ahead with the drilling, and that's exactly what we're doing,” Hanna said.

The company has planned a phase one reverse circulation and diamond program, which will drill for extensions to the Carlow resource, test the large Marillion electromagnetic conductor, 500m east of Carlow, and test the Titan prospect, 2km northwest of Carlow, after surface rock chipping returned grades of up to 51.8g/t gold last year.

“If I look at the drilling on the Artemis ground, it's 412 holes in the Carlow resource, but virtually no drilling at all within a multiples of kilometres radius of that, in an area that's structurally riveting and fascinating and has surface gold occurrences, and I just don't understand why that situation has been like it is, to be honest,” Hanna said.

“These targets are just too good to stay undrilled any longer.”

As a geologist, Hanna is optimistic by nature, but he said his excitement for the drilling program was on “another level”.

“Now it's time for the drill bit to reveal all, so we look forward to that.”

At Stockhead, we tell it like it is. While Artemis Resources is a Stockhead advertiser, it did not sponsor this article.