Key Highlights

  • The scoping study has been widened to consider including Burns Central alongside Mt Martin.
  • Mt Martin hosts a mineral resource of 9.1 million tonnes at 1.6 g/t gold for 460,000 ounces.
  • Consultancy Measured Group has completed pit optimisation, metallurgical review, mine design and scheduling.
  • Completion and public reporting of the scoping study are targeted for the December quarter of 2026.

Lefroy Exploration (ASX:LEX) said on 9 November that it had broadened the scope of its fully funded Mt Martin Scoping Study to include the Burns Central deposit, so that the two can be assessed together as a single regional gold project in Western Australia. The company's announcement framed the change as an expansion that considers including Burns, rather than a final decision on how the deposits would be developed.

Looking at the deposits jointly allows the study to test questions that a standalone assessment of Mt Martin could not answer, such as the most suitable processing scale and configuration, Capital and operating cost estimates, and how ore from different sources might be sequenced through a plant. Managing director Graeme Gribbin described expanding the study to incorporate Burns as "a logical step".

The rationale for combining deposits is common among gold developers holding several modest-grade resources within trucking distance of each other. A larger combined inventory can justify a bigger processing plant, spreading fixed costs over more tonnes and potentially extending mine life. It can also give flexibility to blend ore of different grades and to defer lower-margin material. Whether those benefits outweigh haulage distances and extra infrastructure is exactly what a scoping study of this kind is designed to examine at a preliminary level.

Work completed so far

Consultancy Measured Group has completed pit optimisation, a metallurgical review, mine design and scheduling, and a consolidated financial model for the study, according to Lefroy. Completion and public reporting of the scoping study are targeted for the December quarter of 2026. No capital or operating cost figures have yet been disclosed.

The resource inventory

Mt Martin hosts a mineral resource estimate of 9.1 million tonnes at 1.6 grams per tonne gold for 460,000 ounces, made up of 200,500 ounces in the Indicated category and 259,500 ounces Inferred. The higher-grade portion of Burns Central totals 4.22 million tonnes at 1.18 g/t for 159,285 ounces; that figure is a subset of the wider Burns resource rather than the whole deposit. The Lucky Strike deposit contains 1.27 million tonnes at 1.95 g/t for 79,600 ounces. Lefroy says its combined resources exceed 1 million ounces.

More than half of the Mt Martin ounces are Inferred, the lowest confidence category under the JORC Code. Scoping studies can include Inferred material, but they are by definition preliminary, and the company has cautioned that a scoping study is not sufficient on its own to support a production decision. No ore reserves have been reported for these deposits.

Lucky Strike and exploration plans

Separately, Mining and dewatering at Lucky Strike, operated under a 50:50 profit-share arrangement with BML Ventures, remain on hold because of groundwater inflows. Groundwater management is a common challenge at mining operations, and dewatering infrastructure often requires permits. Miscellaneous licence L25/71 was granted in September, and the company expects a restart during the March quarter of 2027, subject to approvals. Until those approvals are in hand, the timing of any return to mining is uncertain.

On the exploration side, Lefroy plans to drill test the Main, East and Adelaide Shear corridors at Mt Martin from the first quarter of 2027. The company has also appointed Michael Omant as exploration manager to lead that work.

The next milestone is the release of the expanded scoping study itself. Its findings on plant size, costs and mining sequence will indicate whether a combined Mt Martin and Burns development appears viable at a conceptual level and what additional drilling, metallurgical work and higher-confidence studies would be required to move it further. Scoping-level estimates typically carry wide accuracy ranges, and that results may change materially as the project advances to pre-feasibility work, if it does.