Strickland Metals Limited (ASX:STK)
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Apr 28, 2026, 4:10 PM AEST
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2024 Precious Metals Summit Zurich + Energy Transition

Nov 12, 2024

Paul L’Herpiniere
Managing Director, Strickland Metals

Strickland Metals, we're an Australian-listed company. We've got two really strategic assets. So what sets us apart from our peers on the ASX is most companies are pretty happy with one project, one good quality project. We're in the enviable position where we actually have two projects. We have the Rogozna project, which is a gold and base metals project in Serbia. It has Tier One scale. And we also have the Yandal project in Western Australia. And that is strategic given its proximity to Northern Star's Jundee mine. The other thing that makes Strickland a little bit rare compared to our peers is we have over AUD 40 million in cash and liquid assets. So last year, Strickland sold an asset to Northern Star for about AUD 60 million. So since then, Strickland has been fully funded. All of our programs of work are fully funded.

We don't need to raise any capital. We have a very experienced and very strong technical team, both at the board level and at our projects in Serbia. We've got about 25 people on the ground there. And in Western Australia, we have 20 people at our project there. In terms of location, both of our assets are in operating regions. So in Serbia, we have an operating mine 4 km away. And in Western Australia, roughly 50 km away, we've got the Jundee mine. Currently, we're drilling around the clock. We've got an 80,000 m drill program, four rigs on the go in Serbia. We just shut down drilling in Western Australia where we had three rigs. So for the next 12 months, we've still got another 60,000 m to do. We're generally putting out one announcement of drilling results every couple of weeks.

So in terms of the corporate level, we've got a very strong technical board and very strong technical teams at the sites. Currently, our market cap is about AUD 180 million, with, as I said, AUD 40 million in cash and Northern Star shares. So current enterprise value is about AUD 140 million. In terms of the shareholders, our top 20 own about 51%. Okay, so starting off with the Rogozna project. So this is a project in Serbia. Serbia is the land of giants. It's the Western Tethyan Belt. And it's essentially Chile in Eastern Europe. So where we're located is in the Trepča district in the southern part of the country. Trepča used to be one of Europe's largest zinc-lead silver mining complexes back in a sort of Yugoslav times. In the east of the country, you've got the Cretaceous Belt.

Up there, Zijin have invested about AUD 5 billion over the last few years, firstly to acquire Čukaru Peki, which they got for AUD 2.1 billion when they bought Nevsun a couple of years ago. They then spent about another AUD 1 billion building the upper zone of Čukaru Peki. They have recently committed to developing the lower zone at a cost of about AUD 3 billion. Serbia has a long history in mining. Now that Čukaru Peki is on board, it is now Europe's second largest copper producer.

The other good things about Serbia from an operational perspective, as it is a mining country, you have got all the skills you need. You have got all the drilling rigs. It is a really low-cost operating environment, really good quality infrastructure. Through our project, we have got bitumen road, high-voltage power line. It is a really easy place to operate as opposed to parts of Africa and Asia.

In terms of our project, Rogozna, this is a really rare project that you would normally only see in the hands of a major. But every now and then, they can sometimes fall off the table. That's what's happened to this project. For the last 20 years, it has been owned by the likes of Freeport and Eldorado Gold. Over the last four to five years, it was owned by a private equity group called Ibaera Capital. Just recently, in July, Strickland bought this project for AUD 35 million worth of scrip from Ibaera Capital. It's had over $60 million spent on it over the last 20 years. A little bit piecemeal, but over 100,000 m of drilling. There have been four deposits found to date, the largest of which is called the Shanac deposit. That's 4.6 million ounce gold equivalent.

We do report things here in gold equivalent because they are polymetallic deposits. 60% of the metal here is gold, 20% is copper, and the remaining is zinc, lead, and silver. We do get multiple mineralization styles. We get mainly skarn-hosted mineralization, but we've also got porphyry-related mineralization and also epithermal mineralization as well. So far this year, we've drilled about 15,000 m since early July. As you can see there on the left, we've got some amazing drill intercepts. These drill intercepts are as good as any on the ASX other than Spartan Resources, which has got a market cap over AUD 1 billion. To put that into perspective, almost 300 m of continuous mineralization at Shanac, that's basically the distance from here to the waterfront, continuously mineralized.

Within that, you get multiple high-grade structurally controlled zones that are generally 10 m - 50 m thick. Recently, we intercepted a gold-only zone, roughly 90 m at 4 g gold, so you get both bites of the cherry. You've got a bulk tonnage mineralization style, so when the majors have come to look at this project, they're looking at it from a sub-level caving perspective, but importantly, you can also have the optionality of just chasing the high-grade zones, which are 10 m - 50 m thick at 3 g-5 g gold equivalent. Just yesterday, we announced a new discovery, so that's our third discovery in the last four years. This is called Kotlovi, and I'll talk to you about that shortly, so in terms of Shanac, this is the most advanced deposit. It's had almost 40,000 m of drilling, still currently inferred resources.

The actual inferred resource footprint is just the southern half. That's the 4.6 million ounce. It has actually got drill intercepts in the northern part as well, which is basically double the footprint. Through the core of the deposit, we've got almost 14,000 ounces per vertical meter, so this is a monster deposit, as I said, several 100 m thick. Our current focus is chasing the high grade within the central domain. We have improved our understanding this year, and we now know that roughly 80% of the high-grade metal sits within that central domain. Essentially, think of it as a high-grade core. It's controlled by these dikes, which run through there. They're the fluid pathways that have brought in this fluid. In cross-section and long-section, we do get vertical zonation, so in the upper part of the deposit, in the volcanics, we get epithermal mineralization.

We've now got this new gold-only zone, which sits basically at the base of the volcanics up against the dike, and then we've got a lower copper-gold skarn. In long-section, you can see there where we hit the 90 m at 4 g . In that stratigraphic position, the whole deposit is totally open. Gradina, this is a slightly different deposit again. This is the most gold-rich of the deposits. 90% of the metal here is gold. Because of that, it's got really good metallurgical recoveries of about 88% into a gold concentrate. Here, we get steeply dipping lodes. We haven't actually drilled it up deep near surface because historically, the access was through the valleys. We have now put a road up that hill. We've just finished the first two holes drilled up deep, and we should be releasing those results soon.

As you can see, really nice sort of 10 m-30 m thick gold zones, sort of five, six, seven grams per ton. Medenovac, slightly different again. All these deposits are relatively close. They're all going to feed a centralized plant. They're all going to use a flotation process. You only need one plant to service all the deposits. Medenovac, we've currently drilled over 600 m of strike. We've got a really nice high-grade core that's about 150 m-200 m long. Within that, we're getting these sorts of intercepts of sort of 40 m-100 m at about 5 g gold equivalent. Then there's Kotlovi. To the southwest of Medenovac, we've just drilled two holes into a new discovery. We've hit 40 m at 2.6 g just gold in there, including 12 m at 5.7.

And that's only 350 m from the main Medenovac deposit. In cross-section, that's what it looks like. So the Medenovac mineralized volume, that's about 30 million tons sitting right there. 350 m to the southwest, we've got the new Kotlovi discovery. And currently, we've got over 400 m vertically of mineralization within those two holes. At surface, it looks like it's at least 500 m long. We're getting multiple mineralization styles. So we've hit this high-grade breccia. You can see massive sulfide clasts. That tells us that somewhere near that intercept, there should be a massive sulfide body. We've also got this gold-only intercept in an endoskarn, which is quite rare for this project. So we've got multiple mineralization styles, 400 m vertical extent. And we just need to now chase it up deep towards surface.

Because we do have limestone above it, there is a good chance that because the skarn is in connection with the limestone, that that mineralized body can get pretty close to surface. Across the project, we've got over 20 targets. We're currently drilling at Jezerska Reka in this central license. That's a porphyry target. We do have one old hole in there that did hit porphyry veining. So we're drilling there at the moment. We'll then move to Obradov Potok. You can see in this long section down the bottom, those have big IP anomalies. All of our existing deposits have associated IP anomalies as well. So where we've got geochemistry plus an IP anomaly, we generally get some degree of mineralization. Okay, now we're on to the Yandal project in Western Australia. This was Strickland's flagship.

Last year, it sold the Millrose deposit down the bottom, 350,000 ounces to Jundee, about AUD 175 an ounce. So those ounces to Jundee are worth about AUD 2,000 an ounce. This year, we've been drilling up at Horse Well, where there's 150,000 ounces. We've drilled another 20,000 m. And we're doing a resource update as we speak. This is classic orogenic gold. We've got a gold camp sitting in an anticline here. This is where we've drilled the 20,000 m this year. And we've been getting some fantastic drill results. As we drill underneath these oxide resources, we're hitting sort of 10 m - 17 m at generally 5 g - 10 g gold. So this is as good as anything you'll see in an Australian junior gold company. Similarly, at Warmblood, same story, historical drilling just in the oxide.

We've been drilling underneath that this year and again hitting sort of roughly 10 m thick, 5 g- 10 g. And this is completely open at depth over a kilometer of strike. So in terms of our goals for the next 12 months, we've got a lot on our plate. It's going to be a very productive time. We're going to have at least three resource updates for Rogozna. I'm on the record there for saying we're very confident we're going to double the resource base once we bring on Medenovac and Gradina into maiden resources. Now we've got the new discovery to chase as well. We'll also do a resource update for the Yandal, Horse Well, another 20,000 m of drilling there next year on top of the 60,000 m at Rogozna. And so to summarize, why invest in Strickland?

Hopefully, you've got a feeling that we've got extreme leverage to discoveries and resource growth to quality assets. We're fully funded. We don't need to raise any money. We think that with all these things, we have a really clear pathway to create significant value in the medium term. Thank you.

Moderator

Paul, clearly very exciting times for you. Any questions from the audience, please? Just need the microphone. Thank you.

Yes, good morning. You have several projects, as you've shown. Which one has Tier One potential? What's the best one?

Paul L’Herpiniere
Managing Director, Strickland Metals

Yeah, certainly Serbia's Rogozna project is the Tier One project. It's already with the ounces on the board. Certainly, Yandal has the potential. In Western Australian orogenic gold, it can be quite tricky to get the volumes. Obviously, we've got nice grades over 10 m. But it takes a lot more drilling to get that scale.

Moderator

Well, thank you very much, Paul. We're out of time, and people can find you outside.

Paul L’Herpiniere
Managing Director, Strickland Metals

Thank you.

Moderator

Thank you very much.

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