Thor Mining (AIM, ASX: THR) has embarked on an expanded exploration and acquisition strategy – focused initially on Western Australia - with an emphasis on new mainstream commodity opportunities in addition to Thor’s historic portfolio of projects in the Northern Territory.
During the morning trade, shares in the company shot up 70.6% to 2.9c.
Implementation of the strategy has commenced with Thor’s acquisition of the Dundas gold exploration project in the broader Norseman area southeast of Kalgoorlie in Western Australia. A number of potential other acquisitions, focussing primarily on gold, in addition to Dundas are currently under review.
The change in exploration focus and asset mix in 2010 follows an internal review late last year. That identified the need for a new exploration direction for Thor as current global demand, depressed forward prices and the strength of the Australian dollar mitigate against the near term commercial development of the Company’s until now mainstay focus on the Molyhil tungsten and molybdenum project off the Plenty highway, north-east of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory.
The Company will keep the market informed of other developments as they occur.
The company has entered into a terms sheet for the staged acquisition of 3 tenements covering 340 square kilometres in the Western Australian Goldfields approximately 100 kilometres southeast of Norseman.
The tenement package comprises exploration licences E63/872, E63/1101 and E63/1102.
The gold potential of the Albany-Fraser Province has been revolutionised in the past 10 years by the discovery of the +5 million ounce Tropicana gold deposit and numerous other gold occurrences of economic potential. Tropicana has been shown to be just one of a cluster of deposits and to extend for at least one kilometre down the dip of the enclosing strata or structure.
Until the Tropicana discovery, the Albany-Fraser Province was little explored for gold, its potential being hidden by perceived unfavourable geology, very poor outcrop, and in part, burial under younger sediments.
The Dundas project area is located within the general southerly strike extension of the most gold-rich part of the Yilgarn province, the Wiluna-Kalgoorlie-Norseman greenstone belt. Thor Directors believe this may impart an enhanced prospectivity to the section of the Albany-Fraser Province containing the project area.
Thor Chairman Mick Billing said the company was delighted to have been able to access this prime package of gold prospective exploration territory with significant upside and in a broader gold province well regarded in Western Australia’s resources sector.
"While our Molyhil tungsten/molybdenum project in the NT is on hold due to depressed metal prices, we have adopted an invigorated growth strategy based on mainstream commodities in proven mineral provinces to explore for very large gold deposits," Mr Billing said.