Going for Gold with Strategic Metals Australia
Local explorer’s lithium discovery hits global market sweet spot, as Richard Owen discovers.
Think of lithium as ‘new’ gold. Within just a few short years Australia is meeting some 60% of global demand for this critical mineral now being used to make batteries for everything from electric cars to mobile phones. Most of the country’s production comes from Western Australia – none from Queensland yet. However, a private Sunshine Coast critical minerals exploration junior, Strategic Metals Australia (SMA,) aims to change all that after discovering a rare and valuable form of lithium in the State’s far north.
The nature of this discovery within the historic Etheridge Goldfield near Georgetown has even piqued interest from the government-owned Geological Survey of Queensland, which is now co-investing with SMA to fund more advanced exploration. Unlike the majority of lithium deposits in Australia, and indeed worldwide, this deposit contains two rare and very valuable metals – cesium and rubidium. China currently controls 95% of global cesium reserves and rubidium is only available in small quantities at high prices ranging from US$30-130 a gram.
Having a balanced combination of all three metals in one deposit hits a ‘sweet-spot’ in the global market. To use an Olympics analogy, not only is SMA’s discovery one with gold medal (lithium) economic potential, it offers Queensland the silver (cesium) and bronze (rubidium) medals as well.
How did this come about? Well in late 2013 Graham Willett, Peter Wetzig and Rick Murphy founded SMA and acquired a suite of exploration tenements in the Georgetown region. Previous exploration had noted the occurrence of small lithium mica outcrops (now considered pathfinders) on Buchanan’s Creek south west of Georgetown. This creek was named after the famous explorer Nathaniel Buchanan who traversed and surveyed much of North Queensland in the mid-1800s.
Today SMA has mineral rights to about 230km of country in the Georgetown-Forsayth region, an important part of the Etheridge Goldfield. SMA is built on a business model of equity earn-in and partnerships for the dual purpose of saving precious investment capital and engaging partners with specific and much needed skills. Nagrom Laboratories Perth (owner Rick Murphy), Geological Solutions Cooroy (owners Brad and Michael Crighton) and Cordner Advisory (Jason Cordner) are partners. This model has served the company well.
The not-so-secret ingredient for a successful start-up lies in the team. Graham Willett (Director and CEO) has a background in critical metals that extends back to the 1980s when he worked for North American company Molycorp – a major producer of rare earth metals for use in catalysts, phosphors, super magnets and many other applications. In 1981, Graham led the Molycorp team in the discovery of the Mt Weld rare earth, niobium and tantalum deposits near Laverton in Western Australia.
He spent 11 years on the project from discovery to conducting the initial feasibility study. Mt Weld is today mined by Lynas Rare Earths and renowned as the world’s richest rare earth deposit and the major western supplier of these metals. Other notable members of the SMA team include Director Paul Rundel, a process engineer; Director Lindsay Farley, who is a geologist; and CFO Peter Wetzig, a Chartered Accountant, corporate lawyer, and a Chartered Governance Professional.
Not content with finding the new gold, SMA is also actively chasing real gold on some 40 historic gold mining sites within its tenements – mines which predate the First World War. These mines produced small tonnages of very high-grade gold and silver.
In 2002 a prospector from New Zealand, Gary O’Connor found a 1.2 kg nugget of gold named the Providence Nugget using a metal detector at Mt MacDonald which is now under SMA permit. Prospectors (grey nomads) with metal detectors are a common sight in the caravan parks of Georgetown, Forsayth, Flat and Western Creeks in a gold rush that has never stopped. Maybe we will see you up there someday.
For more information, visit www.strategicmetalsaustralia.com
