Peel Mining announced its high-grade maiden copper resource at Mallee Bull earlier this year and is keen to repeat this achievement in its surrounding Cobar Superbasin project.

Drill rods will be turning furiously within its roughly 3000 square kilometre Cobar Superbasin project in the coming months, thanks to two separate exploration funding deals.

A Japanese government-owned enterprise has signed a $A7 million exploration agreement to earn up to 50% of the polymetallic project over five years.

Under the terms of the agreement, Peel will be busy this summer spending the first $1 million before the Japanese financial year ends on March 31.

Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation (JOGMEC) will earn up to 40% in the Superbasin over three years by spending a total of $4 million on exploration.

JOGMEC can then can earn another 10% by funding a further $3 million of exploration over the following two years.

Peel's exploration funds have been further bolstered by $193,500 through the NSW state government's cooperative drilling program.

The program will co-fund drilling at Peel's Sandy Creek and Mundoe prospects within the Superbasin project, and at the Orana prospect near Ivanhoe in western NSW.

Peel has amassed 15 exploration licences to form its Cobar Superbasin project surrounding its high-grade copper discovery at Mallee Bull.

Mallee Bull lies within the Gilgunnia project, a 50:50 joint venture with CBH Resources, which also contains the historic May Day gold mine where a gold and silver mineralisation remains.

Mallee Bull's polymetallic maiden resource is 3.9 million tonnes at 2.7% copper equivalent, containing 90,000 tonnes of copper, 4 million ounces of silver and 43,000oz of gold.

Despite this being one of Australia's highest grade copper discoveries in the past decade, Peel Mining managing director Rob Tyson says all eyes are now on the Superbasin to repeat this exploration success.

"We've done it once and we're going to have a red hot crack at finding another one," Tyson told RESOURCESTOCKS on a recent site visit.

"We're still doing our in-house scoping study on Mallee Bull and the project is moving forward.

"We're doing some high-resolution aeromagnetic survey work, high-res gravity work, mapping the tenement in detail and will do more geophysics and likely a new structural interpretation of the deposit setting in the near term. That's all going to add to the basis for the next stage of exploration at Mallee Bull and we anticipate some significant drilling next year.

"The scoping study work is showing that we've got a great start to life at Mallee Bull and we now want to build on it."

Tyson believes the Superbasin hosts the potential for more Cobar Basin-style deposits: shear-hosted, high grade and with a long mine life.

"We believe the ground we've acquired over the last couple of years is highly prospective," Tyson said.

"The area has previously been discounted pretty heavily … but I think the discovery of Mallee Bull has really turned that on its head.

"Our thoughts are that the area has tremendous potential and it would be really unusual if Mallee Bull is all by itself.

"We certainly believe that it's got every chance of yielding another find or even multiples thereof."

He said the deal with JOGMEC was well worth the effort.

"We're thrilled, it's a great deal, especially given the current market, and it means our exploration efforts are fully funded in the medium term," Tyson said.

"We feel humbled and very fortunate to be able to get JOGMEC on board and the NSW government's grant of drilling co-funding was also very positive."

In the period during JOGMEC negotiations, Peel worked up a number of prospects to drill-ready status and plans to drill four of them in the Christmas period.

"JOGMEC budget timing requirements mean we need to spend the first million on exploration by the end of March, so we're going to hit it pretty hard very shortly with a 7000m drilling program," Tyson said.

"We need to do some meaningful exploration straight up and then we'll have early next year to assess the results.

"From April 1 we'll be into the second year of our JOGMEC exploration budget, so we should be able to complete some really meaningful exploration within the next 18 months."

Tyson has high hopes for the Sandy Creek prospect, which lies about halfway between Mallee Bull and Aurelia Metals' new Hera gold-lead-zinc-silver mine, which began production in the September quarter.

The polymetallic Mundoe project is of similar interest, about 50km south of Mallee Bull and sharing Cobar-style mineralisation.

Previous exploration highlights at Mundoe include 19m at 0.33gpt gold from 8m, 23m at 25gpt silver and 0.4% copper from 129m.

The Cobar Basin is seeing a lot of activity, with Glencore announcing the discovery of 1Mt at 6% copper at a new lense called QTS Central at CSA, Kidman Resources working on its maiden resource for its Browns Reef silver-zinc-lead-copper project, Peel's partner CBH Resources exploring a separate prospect near Sandy Creek, and the Hera mine starting production.

"Underlining the potential of these systems is that while the tonnage is, generally speaking, modest, the grades are quite spectacular," Tyson said.

"In the current metals cycle, grade counts for a lot and they're the targets we want to be chasing.

"We can take some confidence out of what others in the district are doing, that what we've got has some very good potential."

Of Peel's three projects outside the Cobar area, its Attunga tungsten project and Ruby silver project in NSW are on the backburner, whereas the Apollo Hill gold project in Western Australia is gaining attention.

Peel's Apollo Hill resource lies 60km south-east of Leonora in the WA's prolific Goldfields.

It contains two deposits, Apollo Hill and the Ra Zone with a total inferred resource estimate of 505,000 ounces of gold.

Apollo Hill is a major, protruding shear-hosted gold mineralised system that remains open down dip and along strike.

Peel has been exploring the area and had an air-core drilling program planned for November.

Tyson said Apollo Hill was close to the Keith-Kilkenny fault system which was an influence in other major deposits in the area.

"It's a pedigree area that really hasn't seen that much exploration," Tyson said.

"We're pushing that program along because we really like Apollo Hill."

Peel anticipates a busy news flow as its exploration programs step up a gear in the coming months on either side of the country.

"Hopefully we can repeat our success with Mallee Bull and we'll have some good results to deliver early in 2015," Tyson said.

*A version of this report, first published in the November/December 2014 edition of RESOURCESTOCKS magazine, was commissioned by Peel Mining.