Triple Plate Junction becomes a force to be reckoned with once more in PNG and Vietnam

When we wrote about Triple Plate Junction earlier this year it was clear that the Aim-traded company was embarking on a new life under new management.

What’s more, the presence of Newmont on its share register was a reminder that the potential of its assets in Papua New Guinea had not gone unnoticed. But Fraser McGee, the recently appointed chief executive, learned the tricks of the trade in the junior mining sector while at RAB Special Situations Fund so is unlikely to be overly influenced by having a major leaning over his shoulder.

Newmont has already made clear that it wants to acquire Triple Plate, but its overtures have been shrugged off. And anyway Triple Plate is not short on major partners. At Morobe in Papua New Guinea it has Newmont; at the Wamum project in the same country it has Barrick Gold; at the Manus project, Triple Plate has signed up Newcrest; and the Australian company Gold Anomaly is partnering Triple Plate at Crater Mountain.

The latest news from Crater Mountain is that the first drillhole intersected 284 metres between depths of 22 metres and 306 metres at an average of 0.82 grams per tonne gold. The grade may not look that high, but that is a very big intersection, and Peter Macnab, exploration director of Gold Anomaly, greeted these results as ‘highly encouraging’. His point was that the two partners had confirmed the presence of a major alterated and mineralised system with potential to become a large bulk tonnage low grade deposit interspersed with high grade zones. Of special interest to investors are the striking similarities that the mineralisation shows with that found at Barrick’s neighbouring Porgera gold mine and at Newcrest-Harmony’s Link Zone on the Wafi-Golpu project at the Hidden Valley mine. Anybody looking for a reason why Gold Anomaly bought New Guinea Gold’s 10 percent interest in the Crater Mountain licence need look no further.

It is worth pointing out that throughout this hefty intersection from Crater Mountain there were variations in grade. From a depth of only 26 metres from surface there was an intersection of 16 metres at 1.92 grams per tonne. Companies like BHP and Macmin have drilled Crater Mountain in the past, as has Triple Plate, but none hit anything like this. The hole was part of a 10,000 metre programme, started last year, and now nearing completion. It was focused on the Nevera prospect in the northeast corner of the project, and further assay results will be announced as soon as received. Crater Mountain covers an area of six kilometres so there is plenty left to explore and porphyrys, which host the mineralisation in this part of the world, rarely come in ones. This first result therefore means a new 10,000 metre follow-up drilling programme is being planned which is aimed at confirming a deposit of anything from 30 to 70 million tonnes at grades from one to two grams per tonne. This is no resource estimate, just a sighting shot to give investors an idea of the potential.

Peter Macnab is an acknowledged expert on the geology of Papua New Guinea as he was the country’s Government geologist and still lives on Baku Island. He discovered, or participated in the discovery of a long list of PNG mineral resources, the most significant of which is the world-class Ladolam gold mine on Lihir Island. His previous involvement in Newcrest’s Wafi-Golpu project shouldn’t be ignored either.

And mention of the Wafi-Golpu project, which is adjacent to Triple Plate’s Morobe and Wamum projects, means that it is timely to highlight a recent announcement from Newcrest. This stated that a drillhole had intersected a monster 883 metres grading 2.15 percent copper and 2.38 grams per tonne gold and this included 628 metres at 2.82 percent copper and 3.06 grams per tonne gold. This was the highest grade intersection so far and it extends the mineralisation 70 metres north, where it still remains open. Just to emphasise how big this project is, last year a resource estimate to JORC standards of 16 million ounces of gold and 4.9 million tonnes of copper was announced, and the next target is 30 million ounces of gold and eight million tonnes of copper.

When we last wrote about Triple Plate at the beginning of the year, Fraser said he would be doing a tour of the various projects in Vietnam as well as Papua New Guinea to kick tyres and build relations with the various partners, and that is what he is now doing. He told Minews down the wires from PNG that he went to Vietnam first and was very impressed with the speed with which the government had acknowledged that specified exploration work had been carried out at Pu Sam Cap and had returned the 225,000 performance deposit. As a result a drilling programme will be underway shortly on what has long been recognised as a large gold-copper mineralised centre with plenty of evidence of artisanal workings. Exploration work to date has been very encouraging, and the drilling should enable an initial resource estimate to be given before the end of the year.

This level of activity represents a complete transformation from the old days, or not so old because in fact Tony Shearer and Patrick Gorman only came on board in June last year and have built up the new team pretty rapidly since then, with Fraser joining in January of this year. It so nearly went to pot during the period when Geoff Walsh in Zambia answered to Ian Gowrie Smith in Piccadilly on matter relating to Vietnam and PNG that some shareholders are only now starting to unpin share certificates from lavatory walls. Time will be needed to rebuild confidence with investors again, but Fraser is certainly going about it in the right way.

Tags: Triple Plate Junction

Posted by VBN on Apr 15 2011. Filed under Mining & Metal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry