Highlights

• Catalina Resources has been granted Exploration Licence, E38/3697 in the Laverton district of Western Australia.
• Out of the seven tenements forming CTN’s Laverton Project, E38/3697 is the largest tenement.
• At E38/3697, multiple very compelling gold, nickel and REE target areas have been identified.
• Southern Geoscience is undertaking additional processing and modelling of aeromagnetic data.

In the latest announcement, Catalina Resources Limited (ASX: CTN) revealed that it has been granted Exploration Licence, E38/3697 in the Laverton district of Western Australia. The company has won the licence after extensive access negotiations to come to terms with the other entities which own overlapping miscellaneous licences. Out of the seven tenements forming CTN’s Laverton Project, E38/3697 is the largest tenement.

The 15 sub-block tenement sits within the Laverton Gold Province, an exceptionally mineralised terrain in the Eastern Goldfields, Western Australia.

At E38/3697, multiple very compelling gold, nickel, and rare earth element (REE) target areas have been identified by the company. The targets have been detected using historical exploration data, geological interpretations, aeromagnetic images, and ground gravity images. Also, genetic models developed for neighbouring mineral deposits were referred to.

As per the compilation, historical drilling within the tenement was sporadic and non-systematic with no follow-up for key geochemical anomalies.

The ASX-listed company has hired the services of geophysical consultants Southern Geoscience for undertaking dditional processing and modelling of the aeromagnetic data to better analyse the lithological and structural details of the targets identified.

• Gold Targets

The Barnicoat Shear Zone (BSZ) includes numerous gold deposits along its length, such as Mon Ami, Barnicoat, Ida H, and Lily Pond Well.

Located just outside E38/3697, the Lily Pond Well (LPW) has an inferred resource of 340,000 tonnes @ 1.4 g/t Au for 15,000 ozs gold. Notably, LPW deposit holds resemblance with the geological setting of Wallaby Gold Deposit. At LPW, mafic and graphitic schists, mafic conglomerates, pelitic sediments, a pink intermediate porphyry and felsic fragmental rocks are spatially related to a strongly altered felsic intrusive (syenite), with diagnostic alteration.

Data source: company update

• Nickel Sulphide Targets

Anaconda Nickel found the Pelican Laterite Nickel Resource in 1999, which an Inferred nickel resource of 6.4 Mt @ 0.96% Ni, 0.84% Co, 5.6% Mg, at a 0.8% Ni cut-off.

Highly anomalous nickel values were intersected during previous drilling in the laterite profile within the magnetic, north-south orientated, Pelican Ultramafic Belt. The belt extends southwards and into the eastern edge of Catalina’s E38/3697.

Placer Exploration performed drill campaign in 2008, completing three shallow RAB holes within the Pelican Ultramafic in the area now covered by EL38/3697. Notably, highly altered olivine cumulate textured komatiite volcanics were identified by the geologists within these holes.

Multiple other ultramafic units have been revealed within CTN’s tenement through geophysical modelling by Southern Geoscience. This suggests repetitions of the nickel bearing Pelican ultramafic unit are possible and have been poorly tested by previous drilling.

• REE Targets

The main REE deposits at the world-class Mt.Weld Mine are present in secondary phosphates and alumino phosphates derived from weathering of the Proterozoic Mount Weld carbonatite.

The mine comprises substantial deposits of REEs including lanthanum (La), cerium (Ce), praseodymium (Pr), neodymium (Nd), samarium (Sm), europium (Eu), gadolinium (Gd), terbium (Td), dysprosium (Dy) and yttrium (Y).

Mt Weld also hosts the undeveloped Duncan (rare earth), Crown (niobium, tantalum, titanium, rare earths, zirconium) and Swan (phosphate) deposits, located within the Mt Weld Mining Lease.

E38/3697 is located just 2 kms to the north of the Mt Weld REE and is covered by a blanket of recent transported sediments that obscures the underlying geology. At least five discrete, small diameter magnetic anomalies have been identified on the tenement that could represent small carbonatite intrusive bodies related to the adjacent Mt Weld carbonatite intrusive complex.

CTN shares traded at AU$0.004 midday on 03 November 2023. The company has a market cap pf AU$4.95 million.