Sipa Resources has a track record of exploration success and is planning to enjoy first-mover advantage at its district-sized base and precious metals Kitgum-Pader project in Uganda.

Since listing on the Australian Securities Exchange in 1987, Sipa discovered the Panorama copper-zinc VMS province and the Ashburton gold province, which made it a profitable gold producer.

Sipa's prime focus is now on the multi-element potential at its 80%-owned Kitgum-Pader, which comprises 15 exploration licences over 6,350sq.km on the north-eastern edge of the Congo Craton.

The company believes Kitgum-Pader shows the potential to host world-class discoveries, similar to Sirius Resources' massive Nova nickel sulphide deposit, and Broken Hill-type zinc-lead-silver mineralisation.

The company's success as a frontier explorer provides its allure to investors, according to managing director Lynda Daley.

"We are a frontier explorer in Uganda and the benefit you can get from being a first mover in that country is leverage," Daley said.

"It has high-risk but it has massive reward.

"We've got a belt-sized ground holding, which is quite unusual these days to get hold of something that size, in a terrain which is proving to be a very good address for finding world-class mineral deposits.

"It's the sort of place you can stop the car, go for a walk and look at an outcrop and know that no other geologist has stood on that outcrop before and tried to interpret it.

"You really don't know what you're going to find - but we expect to find a lot of different things because no other company has ever scanned that area."

Daley took the helm mid-year from Mike Doepel, who helped identify potential in northern Uganda's rocky outcrops.

The jewel in Sipa's Kitgum-Pader crown is the nickel sulphide target Akelikongo, followed by the zinc-lead-silver system at Pamwa and the nickel laterite potential at Lawiye Adul.

The company interprets Akelikongo as a chonolith, and of the 61 chonoliths known world-wide, 58 are mineralised and 29 mined, such as Voiseys Bay in Canada.

The mineralised nickel-copper zone at Akelikongo is over 350m long, 100m wide and open to the south and to the depth of drilling.

Best results include 55m at 0.52% nickel and 0.15% copper from 0m; and 46m at 0.45% nickel and 0.15% copper from 0m.

"Intrusive nickel sulphide deposits are usually fairly textbook, in terms of mineralogy, ours may be quite similar to the style of intrusive nickel sulphide deposits like Nova."

A ground EM survey was scheduled to begin at the time of going to press to define massive sulphide conductors and target deeper drilling.

The coming months are ideal for fieldwork in Uganda and Daley said an IP survey was also planned for the zinc project at Pamwa.

Initial drill results at Pamwa identified a 1.5km by 300m Broken Hill-style zinc, lead, silver and cadmium in soil anomaly earlier this year.

"The drilling has shown we've got about 500m of strike length that's highly anomalous and one intercept at the bottom of the hole that's 5m at 2% zinc," Daley said.

Another valuable location within Kitgum-Pader is Lawiye Adul, which revealed nickel laterite potential in September.

Highlights from the RAB drilling program included 12m at 0.83% nickel and 12m at 0.9% nickel.

"Those results are showing that the nickel laterite enrichment is occurring there," Daley said.

"It's another potential string in the bow but it's a lower priority than the nickel sulphide and zinc projects.

"People are talking abouta big zinc deficit looming so that's a priority for us."

Back in Western Australia, Sipa is continuing work to better understand the Enigma copper prospect within its 936sq.km Thaduna project in the Gascoyne.

Recent RAB and aircore drilling intersected a number of extensions to mineralised structures and revealed some visible secondary copper.

At the Green Dragon North East prospect at Thaduna, RAB drilling has extended the known length of the mineralised fault to 400m.

Highlights include 10m at 3.1% copper from 75m, including 4m at 5.3% copper from 78m.

At the Enigma prospect, three holes intersected a steep structure intersecting the secondary copper blanket and best results included 9m at 2.6% copper from 60m to end of hole.

Enigma's secondary copper zone is not economic in its own right but it is extensive, at 5km by 2km, and Sipa is keen to enhance the project's prospectivity.

Sipa's Thaduna project surrounds two historic copper mines, which are being explored in a joint venture by Sandfire Resources and Ventnor Resources.

"There's a lot of action in that area," Daley said, "but Uganda is where it's all blue sky."

RESOURCESTOCKS spoke with Daley upon her return from a month-long trip to Uganda, where she met President Yuweri Museveni and also hosted mine department heads at the Kitgum-Pader project.

"We had the Commissioner and his second in command visit and it's important to get people of that calibre up to the project," Daley said.

"The higher profile a company has, the more people are watching you but you're more likely to get support.

"We want to be seen as the poster child over there for how to do mineral exploration the right way and we have great community support where we are."

Daley said 20 years on from a civil war that raged over the area, the community was very keen to progress and welcomed foreign investment.

"We're not taking advantage of the situation, we're treating community members as potential employees and they are welcoming us into their communities," she said.

"We employ local crews to go out with our geologists to conduct soil sampling and at this first footing stage, we're involving the community and they're getting a financial benefit."

Daley said Sipa's expertise as highly technical and experienced explorers would prove of real benefit at Kitgum-Pader.

"We're hell-bent on discovering a new district in a new belt and we have a history of successful discoveries," she said.

"So when you invest in Sipa, you invest in a lot of leverage because when we do find something, it will be of significance.

"Most of the world has been well-scoured by now so that's what makes us unique with our ground in Uganda.

"And once that message gets out and we get some better results, I think success will come from a share price point of view."

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