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Locksley Resources has set its sights on becoming a serious player in Australia’s copper sector, stitching together a sprawling 1000-square-kilometre copper-gold district in central New South Wales following its move to secure an option over the nearby Iron Duke project.
The company’s newly minted Greater Tottenham Copper project packs an impressive starting punch, led by its existing Tottenham resource of 9.86 million tonnes grading 0.73 per cent copper, 0.22 grams per tonne (g/t) gold and 2g/t silver.
Adding further muscle to the copper play is Iron Duke’s historical 1.3-million-tonne resource grading one per cent copper and 0.6g/t gold, giving Locksley two established mineralised centres and a vast stretch of prospective ground to chase further discoveries.
The option over Iron Duke, acquired from Sky Metals, looks a particularly savvy move. The project boasts a history of high-grade results, with rock chip and mine dump sampling reportedly returning values up to a spectacular 26.1 per cent copper. Previous drilling also delivered multiple wide, high-grade intercepts, including a hefty 13m grading 1.56 per cent copper and 4.48g/t gold from just 37m.
‘The greater Tottenham project hosts an established copper-gold mineral resource supported by brownfields growth and a substantial legacy dataset.’
Locksley Resources technical director Ian Stockton
Notably, Locksley has laid out a two-pillar strategy for the new district-scale play. The first pillar will focus on resource growth through targeted drilling of extensions to known copper-gold systems at Tottenham, such as the high-grade Carolina deposit, while testing a suite of brownfields and greenfields targets.
These targets include extensions of the Mt Royal and Orange Plains prospects, alongside a re-evaluation of the Bogan River prospect. The second pillar aims to increase the economic viability of each resource tonne through technical studies covering metallurgy, mineability and processing pathways.
As part of the fresh copper move, Locksley has also initiated an integrated exploration strategy, compiling and reprocessing more than 20 years of geophysical, geochemical and geological data. A key near-term goal will be to complete a nearly finished independent mineral resource estimate, providing an updated technical foundation for the entire Greater Tottenham district.
Locksley Resources technical director Ian Stockton said: “The Greater Tottenham project hosts an established copper-gold mineral resource supported by brownfield growth centres and a substantial legacy dataset. The independent mineral resource estimate will provide a contemporary technical baseline to guide targeted drilling and supporting studies toward potential development options. Ongoing integration of drilling, reprocessed geophysics and geochemistry is improving geological confidence and defining high-priority exploration targets expected to be part of the near-term exploration programs.”
The combined Greater Tottenham project sits within the Girilambone Basin of the well-known Lachlan Fold Belt, a region that hosts some of NSW’s most significant copper and gold operations. With neighbours including the Cobar mining district and the Tritton and Mineral Hill operations, Locksley finds itself in a postcode with a serious mining pedigree.
The renewed copper push follows Locksley’s recent decision to pull the pin on further exploration at its Mojave critical minerals project in California, where a sharp 57 per cent collapse in antimony prices and disappointing geological continuity prompted a rethink.
Rather than pouring more money into its Desert Antimony Mine and El Campo rare earths prospects, the company has opted to preserve its US claims at minimal cost and redirect its firepower towards opportunities with greater commercial potential.
With its Australian copper ambitions now firmly in the spotlight, Locksley has traded the uncertainty of early-stage US exploration for an established NSW copper resource, a swag of promising drill targets and a sizeable stretch of largely underexplored ground. If the next round of drilling can turn some of those targets into additional tonnes, Greater Tottenham could provide the company with a compelling springboard into Australia’s copper development ranks.
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