Flagship Minerals scoops huge data haul for Chilean gold project
- James Pearson
- Aug 27
- 3 min read
Flagship Minerals (ASX: FLG) has pulled off a significant coup by scooping up Anglo American’s complete historical exploration dataset for the company’s Pantanillo gold project in northern Chile’s fabled Maricunga gold belt.
The data dump includes almost 33,000 metres of drilling across 148 holes, together with more than 2100 rock, soil and stream sediment samples. It also contains extensive ground magnetic surveys and a library of hard copy geological plans, plots and exploration reports.
Under the back-ended deal structure, Flagship will pay Anglo just US$100,000 (A$154,000) upfront for the information, followed by US$250,000 in 12 months and US$500,000 in 24 months. A final US$1 million is only payable if it exercises its option to acquire Pantanillo outright.
With the whole trade costing just $2.85 million, the company has scored a serious win by picking up the ready-made records for barely a tenth of the estimated $30 million and five years it would take to drill it from scratch.
Mining companies Kinross Gold, Orosur Mining and Anglo were responsible for compiling the work across 33 years from 1983 to 2016. All material reverted to Anglo after individual options expired.
Included in the treasure trove is almost 14,000m of diamond drilling core - a gold mine of information currently stored by Anglo in Copiapó. Flagship’s priority is to re-test these core samples to extract much of the vital information needed to fast-track a JORC-compliant resource, long before a drill rig even hits the ground.
Notably, a further 25 holes, totalling 12,300m and laced with mineralisation, has never been factored into Pantanillo’s current 1.05-million-ounce foreign resource estimate. It means Flagship now holds a rich pipeline of assays with potential to immediately swell its gold inventory.
“This is an exceptional milestone. The Anglo dataset gives us access to all historical drilling at Pantanillo, of which over 12,000m was previously unavailable to us and not included in the current foreign estimate of 1.05Moz gold. With this data, we can accelerate the transition to a JORC-compliant mineral resource and potentially grow the existing gold inventory significantly - without drilling.” Flagship Minerals managing director Paul Lock
Like many of the bigger gold mines in Chile, Pantanillo is a porphyry deposit with a thick oxide layer overlying a sulphide base.
While the mineralisation is already well mapped, Flagship says the project still has plenty of upside, with scope to grow both its oxide and high-grade sulphide gold zones.
The company says the newly acquired information will help it zero in on seven priority targets that could pack a serious punch. Recent groundwork has flagged strong oxide gold along strike north and south of Pantanillo Central, while major alteration zones have emerged at Pantanillo Norte to the northwest.
And with fresh mineralisation hosting magnetite and pyrite – prime geophysical markers – Flagship intends to remodel Anglo’s magnetic data to fine-tune more targets across its 110-square-kilometre landholding.
The company also plans to use the fresh data to supercharge the project’s metallurgical and feasibility credentials, with the numbers already stacking up nicely. A 2012 study outlined 47.4 million tonnes of oxide and mixed ore at 0.69 grams per tonne (g/t) gold for 1.05 million ounces, with an 85 per cent recovery rate.
The ore was deemed ideal for low-cost open pit mining, but with 46 per cent oxide and 52 per cent mixed material, heap leaching is also firmly on the cards.
The process involves stacking ore on a lined pad and soaking it with a gold-leaching solution and is rare for big Australian deposits. In Pantanillo’s case, it could possibly be used to mirror the success of Canadian-listed Rio2 Limited’s nearby Fenix Gold Project, 40km north.
Oxide ore grading 0.48g/t gold at Fenix is expected to deliver 75 per cent recoveries through heap leaching. Flagship believes Pantanillo’s similar geology could yield equally strong results at a fraction of the traditional processing costs.
Armed with a stack of new data, Flagship says it’s now primed to quickly and cheaply build enough JORC-compliant resources to consider a long-life, low-cost open-pit or heap leach mine plan capable of pumping out 100,000 ounces of gold a year for at least 10 years.
And if the incoming data lives up to expectation, Flagship and its Pantanillo gold play could become one of the fastest and most cost-effective gold resource growth stories of the year.
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