RooGold: Exploring For Gold In Australia
RooGold Inc. (CSE: ROO) is a Canadian mineral exploration company focused on the acquisition and development of early-stage mineral projects in New South Wales (NSW), Australia. The company owns a massive, district scale 1,380 km² land package comprising 13 concessions which are host to 137 historic mines and prospects.
Despite the size of the asset portfolio and historical mining activity, only 28 historic holes have been drilled across the entire land position. RooGold represents a compelling situation for investors due to being a relatively new public company and one of a few Canadian juniors actively exploring in Australia.
Australia is a world-class, mining-friendly jurisdiction with a well established mining industry that accounted for 10.4% of Australia’s economic output in 2020. In 2019, Australia was the world’s 2nd largest gold producer and 8th largest silver producer. It is also one of the world’s largest exporters of base metals such as copper, lead, manganese and coal.
The company’s management and professional teams are based in Toronto, London and New South Wales (NSW), Australia, and have extensive experience in the region. RooGold is well-financed with a current cash position of over $3 million. In October, ROO entered into a strategic shareholder agreement with Crescat Capital LLC, a prominent precious metals investment fund that was a significant investor in the company’s October 2021 $2.6 million private placement financing.
Crescat’s investment team and its geologic and technical director, Dr. Quinton Hennigh, are acting as advisors to RooGold management. Dr. Hennigh is an internationally-renowned economic geologist with 25 years of experience leading exploration exploration teams for some of the world’s largest mining companies.
The company’s exploration strategy is overseen by Dr. Chris Wilson, another renowned exploration geologist who has worked with some of the world’s largest gold mining companies and has extensive experience in Australia. ROO’s Chief Operations Manager, Alexandra Bonner, is a highly-regarded NSW based professional geologist with over 15 years of extensive experience in exploration, mining and project management across Australia.
RooGold’s strategy is to assemble properties that have limited historical exploration within deposit types that are controlled by known regional geological structures hosting high-grade mineralization. The company’s property portfolio currently includes nine high-grade gold targets and four silver targets with 137 historical small mines and confirmed mineralization that offers tremendous exploration potential.
The nine gold properties, which cover 1091 km² and contain 106 historic small-scale gold mines and prospects, are hosted within the largely underexplored, highly-mineralized New England Orogenic Terrane and Lachlan Orogenic Belt structures. These are large-scale structures that offer potential for larger targets hosting mostly orogenic, intrusion-related, or epithermal mineralization. In addition to its highly prospective gold properties, RooGold has four properties that are highly prospective for silver.
RooGold’s immediate exploration strategy is focussed on targets located on the prolific Peel-Manning Fault system that has strong gold mineralization along its 350 km strike length and hosts ocean floor mafic and ultramafic rocks present as listwanite, quartz-carbonate altered serpentinites. Listwanite type gold deposits are considered to be highly desirable exploration targets and often are key to a number of large scale, multi-million ounce gold mines in various parts of the world.
In a significant development that adds credibility to ROO’s strategy, gold mining giant Newmont Corp. (NYSE:NEM) has also recognized the importance of this structure and has staked a 1200 km² land package covering a 125 km strike length of a parallel structure 30 kilometres east of the Peel Manning Fault Zone and 35 kilometres from RooGold’s property.
New South Wales has very well established infrastructure to support all aspects of large-scale mining operations and is a major mining region in Australia with several major mining companies operating in NSW. Newcrest Mining’s (TSX: NCM) Cadia Mine is located in the Cadia Valley and is Australia’s second largest open-pit gold mine. It comprises a collection of large underground and open-pit gold and copper mines located 20 kilometres south of the city of Orange. Evolution Mining (ASX: EVN) meanwhile operates the large Cowal open-pit gold mine which has an estimated 9.7 million ounces of gold reserves. The region has prolific mineralization with multiple metallogenic belts similar to other Australian regions, but has been largely unexplored outside of the main camps. However, the regions precious mineral endowment is estimated to exceed 100 million ounces of gold and 1 billion ounces of silver.
After reviewing the existing database on its properties and preparing its five-stage exploration strategy, RooGold will initially focus its 2022 exploration programs on the three high-priority Peel-Manning Fault system targets which are the Trilby, Lorne and Goldbelt properties, as well as the highly prospective Castle Rag silver properties. Although RooGold is a relatively new name on the CSE, it essentially represents ground-floor exposure to Australia, one of the world’s most important mining jurisdictions.
The firm is well financed, and there are 72.6 million shares outstanding with a relatively modest $9.43 million market capitalization. ROO’s massive land package ensures that the properties will be actively explored and should provide shareholders with plenty of catalysts for years to come.
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