Xcelsior chief executive officer Liam Farley said the Hillgrove project represented an opportunity to finance the development of a high-quality, brownfield asset that will be a leading producer of antimony – a critical metal with limited western supply that is increasingly important to the energy transition through its use in the solar industry.

The Hillgrove project embraces an area of about 254 square kilometres and is made up of four exploration leases and 48 granted mining leases where a 1.4-million-ounce antimony-gold equivalent resource has been defined at a grade of 6.1g/t gold equivalent. The field also contains abundant untested tungsten, which has always been mined with the gold and antimony, but was never extracted in the process plant.

Both antimony and tungsten are on the critical minerals list of many countries, including the United States, China and Australia and the European Union.
The Hillgrove mineral field has been an active mining centre for more than 100 years and is well-situated on existing transport infrastructure. It lies just 23km from the nearest main centre of Armidale in NSW and is nearby other hubs in Tamworth and coastal Coffs Harbour.

Historically, the Hillgrove field produced upwards of 750,000 ounces of gold and 40,000 tonnes of antimony. More than 200 high-grade antimony and gold exploration targets sit outside the current mineral resources area.

High-grade gold areas identified by Larvotto for further near-term drilling include the historic Bakers Creek and Clarks Gully areas. Additionally, old records show the mine tailings storage facility (TSF) contains about 1.4 million tonnes of tailings.

Old Hillgrove records show a considerable amount of gold and tungsten slipped past the processing and ended up in the TSF. Current estimates and some metallurgical auger drilling by the company indicate the TSF contains a grade of about 1.34g/t gold.

None of the mineralisation contained in the tailings is included in Larvotto’s current mineral resource.

Management is already reviewing its ore reserves – a move that could support a preliminary feasibility study that is already in train – in addition to relevant metallurgical testwork, mining studies, plant rehabilitation and upgrade reviews.

Larvotto shares jumped more than 43 per cent today to touch a high of 9.3c, from a close yesterday of 6.5c, in the company’s biggest trading day since last April as more than 6.8 million shares changed hands.

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