As Investigator Resources managing director John Anderson puts it: “We set ourselves up for the upturn and we’ve jumped out of the blocks” – aiming for silver as first prize.

The company has applied breakthrough exploration techniques in South Australia’s southern Gawler Craton, which resulted in the high-grade Paris silver discovery in 2011.

Investigator significantly increased its 100%-owned Paris resource in November 2015 to 8.8 million tonnes at 116g/t silver, containing 33 million ounces at a 50g/t cut-off.

“That’s our principal asset and it’s our priority to accelerate the development of the Paris silver deposit as a standalone silver project,” Anderson says.

“It’s a rare opportunity in Australia.”

But what the discovery has also proved is the merit of Investigator’s exploration approach.

“Paris is a very good initial result but we believe we can move Investigator into next echelon by following up on the flow on of ideas to come from that,” Anderson (below) said.

“We are re-setting the understanding of the geology of the southern Gawler Craton and that creates opportunities for further discoveries not only in silver, copper and gold but also nickel.”

The approach has been recognised in the SA government’s latest round of co-funding, awarding Investigator A$290,000 to drill silver and copper-gold targets near Paris.

Anderson said the drilling would test new target styles that could significantly advance the state’s minerals potential.

“The PACE (Plan for Accelerating Exploration) grant is an acknowledgement of Investigator’s research efforts and innovative approach towards developing these breakthrough opportunities,” he said.

The co-funding will also free up more of the company’s recent $5.4 million capital raising to progress the Paris development, including infill drilling to increase confidence in the resource, as well as metallurgical and hydrological work, aiming for a pre-feasibility study in mid-2017. 

Anderson was happy for the PACE-funded work to be publicly available and said the company had strong relationships with the state government’s Geological Survey and a number of universities, who were researching the Paris discovery and regional exploration techniques.

“We established our ideas on which the Paris discovery is based well before we set up the company and therefore we hold the tenements we wish to hold,” he said.

“We have a very substantial holding across the southern Gawler Craton and now we’re venturing up into the Olympic Dam belt into iron-ore-copper-gold (IOCG) exploration.”

At the time of going to press, Investigator had just started drilling at the porphyry style Nankivel copper-gold target, 5km from Paris.

“We believe the Paris silver deposit has the right geology to suggest there should be a copper-gold porphyry deposit nearby, and probably more than one, and we are testing the best targets at the moment,” he told the Mining Journal.

“The surface indications would look good over any porphyry system in South America.

“But we’re not satisfied with that, there are more flow on ideas.

“What we’re doing at Paris and Nankivel tells us how to explore for IOCG deposits and that Paris and Nankivel were formed at the same time as (Australia’s largest underground mine, BHP Billiton’s) Olympic Dam.”

The company also closely followed results of a nationwide geological survey and quickly pegged what it believes is a highly prospective IOCG target, the Maslins prospect 300km north of Paris (drilling below) and 50km south of Carrapateena.

Anderson said there was an often-commented on large gap in the sizes of South Australia’s IOCG deposits, between the gargantuan Olympic Dam and OZ Minerals’ smaller Prominent Hill and Carrapateena deposits.

“We think we’ve got the target in Maslins that is the size to potentially fill that gap,” he said.

“It’s a gravity anomaly, its modelled source is 6km long and 1km wide and it sits in the right structures from the application of our knowledge and the indications from old drilling data.

“The next generation of IOCG discoveries in the Olympic Dam belt will come from the application of such research-based thinking and prioritising which gravity target to go for.

“Maslins is a little bit deeper than Carrapateena but we have confidence from our research work to say that it’s a target we want to test.”

With 40 years’ experience in the mining industry, Anderson said he was feeling on top of his game and had not enjoyed the business more than now.

He relocated, along with the head office, to Adelaide from Queensland earlier this year, in anticipation of the market upturn and to enable a more hands-on approach.

“And what a time to turn up, because we’re rocking and rolling,” he said.

He said Investigator was well-positioned for the upturn, because it had persisted through the downturn, kept its geological team in place, continued its research, increased the Paris resource and organised access to Nankivel so the company was primed to act when the sentiment improved.

“I think it’s a case of ‘fortune favours the brave and the ready’ and we were ready to put Investigator forward and ready to launch into next upturn,” he said.

“The market sentiment changed earlier this year, the silver price took off, our share price is up and we were able to raise more than $5 million.

“We were busy in the downturn maximising the use of the data we’d collected and now we’re going to be even more busy as we build the Investigator story.”

He welcomed the new shareholders who took part in the recent capital raising and thanked those who had maintained their support during the downturn.

In the coming weeks, drilling will shift from the Nankivel copper-gold target back to Paris to complete an infill drilling program as the company makes the silver development its top priority.

“It’s a robust project with a strong resource and a high grade for an open pit scenario – we believe Paris is the best openpit silver proposition in Australia,” Anderson said.

“It’s showing good metallurgical traits in the initial tests we did, we have found a likely water supply nearby and our initial baseline flora and fauna studies have not recognised any issues.

“We’re focused on a revitalised part of South Australia that continues to give Investigator a diversity of commodity opportunities,” he added.

“We’ve proven our approach with Paris and we have a number of very promising copper-gold targets to follow up on and more silver targets around Paris, because of the flow of opportunities we’ve developed in our breakthrough approach to South Australian geology.

“So along with our transition into a silver producer, these exciting flow-on opportunities could move Investigator into the next echelon of mining companies.”