Our next presentation is from Waratah Minerals. Speaking today is Peter Duerden, the company's Managing Director.
Thanks very much. Yeah, it's a pleasure to be in Zurich to introduce Waratah Minerals. We're a gold discovery story in Australia, in the East Lachlan, Macquarie Arc, next door to Newmont's Cadia Valley. We've had two years since we acquired the project. It's been a two-year journey so far. The discovery process is well underway. We're over 50% of our drilling still extensional, but there's a component of resource definition drilling happening as well now. We're demonstrating that grade and scale potential for this opportunity very, very quickly. We've got the team, which is clearly technically delivering, as I say, strategic position right next door to Cadia Valley at a time when that operation could do with some brownfields targets. The strategy is delivering.
As I'll say a few times, we saw this opportunity to test an idea, which sort of stemmed to a lot of experience in this belt of rocks as being some fundamental criteria and controls of mineralisation. Now we've got five rigs operating. We've put our foot down in the last few months, really with a sign of great confidence from the board. The register's starting to look after itself, but we've had some international funds really starting to help there now. This has been the journey in a snapshot, two years since that acquisition, late 2023, rolling out one to two rigs, testing underneath some old gold mines, what we thought were important. You can see we've been ratcheting up, keeping momentum, increasing news flow. A couple of key results there.
A couple of months ago, 208 metres at 1.2, starting to really demonstrate the scale potential of this discovery opportunity. AUD 30 million placement completed recently puts us in a great position to move forward. As I say, the register's starting to gain a lot of strength. Gladstone Mining, that's Stuart Tonkin's investment vehicle. We've had 1832, great supporters on market in the last couple of placements, and Farjoy out of Sydney. The team has done this before. I've been involved with the Lachlan with stories, Alkane's discovery stories at Tomingley. It's been 18 years of my career as a geo working on those rocks. Andy Stewart, Chairman, who's here with me this week. We know where the value is being driven from, and clearly we're onto the right story. Why here?
I mean, Macquarie Arc, or the East Lachlan, as it gets described as, the jewel in the crown, Cadia Valley. It's a monster to be over 80 million gold equivalent ounces there. One of the world's great gold-rich porphyry clusters. We're just off the western side, about 4 km off the western contact there of that property. Also of note in this belt, Cowal, epithermal gold. In a sense Evolution purchased that 10 years ago from Barrick. They've taken it from 3 million- 12 million, 14 million ounce total gold endowment. Gold-rich porphyries and the epithermal systems is what this region's known for. It's the land of the majors. The majors are investing here in mines and in exploration, normally via JV deals with juniors, but also in their own right in places as well.
We're surrounded by goldfields, and as I say, off the shoulder of Newmont's Cadia Valley project. Zooming into Spur Project itself, the key criteria that we like here is exploring and focusing off the margins of the magnetic complexes. They represent these oxidized, very fertile, intrusive complexes. Again and again, the deposits are located off the margins of them. Once you have high-resolution magnetic data, you can see where that critical priority target space is. This was an example where that had not been done very effectively. We came in and started drill testing on the margins. There were some gold mines there already. There were some interesting hits already. We went and reviewed due diligence on some of that old material. It showed a lot of signs that you like to see in these rocks. The strategy's working. That exploration criteria, we're onto the right path.
Just to reiterate that, if you look at the big deposits of the region, things like Ridgeway, Cadia East, Cadia Valley, a lot of the big epithermal deposits around Cowal, they are situated off in this setting, off the margins and on that contact of the early intrusive complexes. That is a big reason why we are finding this now. The obvious question is, how are you doing this now? We have had a lot of great explorers come through here prior to us, Anaconda Copper back in the 1970s. They were really interested in this area for porphyry copper mineralisation. They went up into the top of the hills, which was the expression of those intrusive complexes. We are basically in the foothills and underneath the old gold mines. That is where we think the focus is.
It also just makes a lot of sense, the discovery of things like Ridgeway, Cadia East in the late 1990s. No one was really thinking about that target position because no one had found the deposits until those discoveries. I think it makes a lot of sense why this is happening now. We have come in with a very clear strategy, a very aggressive strategy, now with five rigs drilling in that position. There is a lot to like about the rocks. A lot of fertility indicators there. Lots of similarities with the Cowal, the Cowal epithermal systems. Overprinting generations of epithermal, sub-epithermal veins in the same volume of rock. We like to see that. You can see some step-out holes of note. Hole 62 was a real step change for us on multiple levels.
A big step out there extended the overall system to depth and about an extra 500 metres to the northeast. This Spur Gold Corridor, as we call it, off the southern margin of the mag complex there. In the detail, you can see multiple plus 150 gram metre hits, hole 62, 250 gram metre hit. You are seeing rapid definition of gold ounces here. Particularly hole 62 there in that consol zone, a great discovery in many ways, but some really dynamic decision-making as well, 200 metre RC hole extended to 400 metres. We liked what we saw each time, continued to extend it, extended that hole to over 800 metres with Diamond Core, and that is when we hit this zone.
Overprinting, multiple generations of gold coming in with these epithermal stringers and sub-epithermal stringers, but also evidence for early stage, high-temperature porphyry veins carrying a lot of gold. Very strong signs of fertility that you're onto something of note in the East Lachlan and in the Macquarie Arc. What does the Spur Gold Corridor look like at the moment? Early days, pre-resource days where we're at at the moment. We're pushing hard with five rigs. What does it look like if you look elsewhere in the belt? That corridor in particular looks to be very similar to GRE 46 ore body at Cowal. Part of that 14 million ounce system at Cowal. GRE 46 is about the same dimensions, 2 km long. Both systems are open, of course, but about a year ago, Evolution Mining started underground mining in GRE 46.
Same styles of mineralisation, those overprinting relationships. You will see just the raw numbers. The drill intercepts there are very similar in terms of the early stage discovery hits. Spur is coarse at surface versus this one is buried downplunge from the open pit. We think we understand the significance of what we are finding here. Still the early days in terms of the discovery, but now we are one of the busiest stories coming out of Australia with five rigs operating. Built a big technical team around this. We know where the value is moving forward. It is probably that slide there, the proof of concept has been achieved, and now we are really accelerating activity to add value to all stakeholders. Thanks very much.
Thank you, Peter. We have a couple of minutes for questions. If there's any questions in the audience, there's a microphone here. If you could just wait. If not, you mentioned metallurgical test work. I mean, based on sort of previous work, what's your expectation for the metallurgy here?
Yeah, no problem. Yeah, early days there, we're doing geomet work across those multiple zones within the gold corridor. Gold deportment work sort of starts with that micro- XRF scanning of the core, so we can get sort of immediate indications of what gold's associated with, size of gold particles. We're seeing very encouraging signs. There's no red flags there. Yeah, we obviously just want to get a good feel across those zones going forward. It looks to have so many similarities mineralogically to Cowal, so we see a very similar flow sheet to what Cowal use.
Do you have copper present as well, based on?
Some zones of copper, yeah, and that's sort of pointing ultimately to that porphyry potential at depth in a couple of areas. Yeah, sniffs.
Okay. Any other questions? There's one at the back.
You mentioned that your project is close to Cadia. Can you give me an idea as to what they're producing from the gold system? I understand Cadia's a copper gold system, but from their gold mine, how are they producing and that potential impact and opportunity for your company?
Yeah, certainly. Now, it's a good time to make this discovery when you look at the production history of Cadia Valley. It's not the gold producer that it used to be. It used to be in the top three million ounces per year production when they were mining things like Ridgeway or Cadia East, those real sweet spots of that system. That's come back off now to more like 350,000 ounces-400,000 ounces gold production. Copper and moly as well, of course, there. Newmont, since they acquired it a couple of years ago, they've come in with quite an aggressive exploration push in the brownfields around Cadia. I feel that's pretty much a reflection of what they can see. The value of that, it's a gold mill that's being expanded rapidly at the moment from 32 million tons with plans to go to 40 million tons per annum. You can see it's very sensitive. It's also an operation these days which, in difference to the past, is one single ore source now coming out of Cadia East as opposed to multiple ore sources. We feel this could be a very strategic fit for that operation in terms of essentially close enough to be a brownfields target for them there.
Just one last question. In your sort of anticipated activities, the last line is research and CODES. I guess that's an acronym for something. What is that and what are you doing?
Yeah, certainly. Yeah, no, we've committed a very technical sort of strategy. Obviously, immediately when we acquired it, we work a lot with the Centre of Ore Deposit Studies at the University of Tasmania. It's one of those preeminent institutions in the porphyry world in particular, but they've done a lot of good work collaborating with industry in the Macquarie Arc, in the East Lachlan, in this area. We tend to piggyback and look for those collaborations. We're sponsoring a PhD student, which is around really helping us to get a quick feel for how this mineralisation in terms of the timing, the age of this mineralisation fits into the metallogenesis of the Lachlan Fold Belt, things like Cadia Valley, Cowal. It's quite an active area where those cooperations and collaborations are happening.
Excellent. If there's no further questions, Peter, thanks very much for the time.