Located in Western Australia’s Goldfields region, Leeuwin Metals’ (ASX:LM1) Marda Gold Project (MGP) – an easy-to-access site in the middle of a world-class gold mining province – has come back onto the fore, which, for the project itself, reflects a comeback after nearly one hundred years quietly waiting for new management.
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The subject of historical workings, which has left Leeuwin looking at several existing open pits on-site, the MGP hasn’t seen much work over the past century since its peak; indeed, some prospects known to the company’s geology team have been hardly touched since, especially by modern drilling equipment.
The key reason why this value proposition may be exciting is two-fold. First, the company’s MGP represents a 500sqkm footholding in the WA Goldfields, which itself is an impressive tenure for an exploration player.
Secondly: With gold prices where they are, clocking fresh record levels once again in Week 40 of the year (A$5,760/oz), the existing economics for many historical projects have now been completely changed – meaning that sleeping projects walked away from before the invention of Wi-Fi now have a new lease as we head into the second quarter of the 21st Century.
Okay, so what’s the latest at Marda?
As the WA Goldfields-based flagship on Leeuwin’s books works on-site, the MGP have been pronounced through the year, with the second half of CY2025 promising big things – and newsflow – coming from the company.
Drilling is currently underway at the forgotten Evanston Mine, where Leeuwin will be the first company in 20-plus years to conduct a significant drill program. There are over 5,000m of drilling with assays pending.
In late August, the company confirmed that gold extends underground, below known mineralisation boundaries. This discovery was made at the bottom of an existing open-pit on a site first created nearly 100 years ago.
Across an area of at least 200x200m, an area near the existing ‘Pyhon’ prospect (part of the MGP) now sits ready for further investigations. That mineralisation extends further underground is likely of much interest to company geotechs who now want to assess just how wide, and how far, in which directions, that extension goes.
If the results are good, modern gold prices are surely more than high enough to justify the cost of further mining to access the material. So too other areas of interest – and just recently, the company found no less than eleven new high-grade rock chips, now giving up to 11 areas for potential future drilling.
Maiden MRE in sight for CY26Q4
That there’s this much potential for the junior explorer, even on-site at a historical mine, underscores why the company is confident it can ink a maiden JORC-compliant Mineral Resource Estimate (MRE) for the MGP before the EOY.
To that end, current drilling continues on-site at the Evanston prospect; focus has turned away from Python for the time being.
At Evanston, the company has noted that of many areas on-site at the MGP, the Evanston target has been one of the quietest since the 1930s, with very little exploration work having occurred there at all in nearly 100 years.
That was too tantalising a prospect for drillers, and with gold prices where they are, shareholders would surely be remiss to blame them.
While MGP is the focus – Leeuwin is also interesting in that it’s exposed to a diverse range of commodities at home and in North America.
Diverse exposure to other minerals
Worth noting is that the company stands poised to launch on still-retained lithium and nickel projects in Canada, respectively, and a prospective iron ore project in Western Australia.
Its Cross Lake lithium project (CLP), an exploration play, is a 600sqkm project adjacent to a hydroplant (offering the potential benefits of ESG credentials) within a historical mining region known to boast lithium-hosting pegmatites. Already drilled with diamond-tipped rigs for 2,500m, visible spodumene is also reported by the company.
While gold economics far outstrip that of gold right now on a common sense analysis alone, an uptick in the EV battery metals market stands as a potential alterior value proposition of Leeuwin Metals. Similarly, its William Lake nickel Project (WLP) located in Canada’s Thompson Nickel Belt offers similar potential upside with an established of historical core already pushing the company along in the long process of mine development.
But the company’s ultimate focus at this time is gold, and that checks out. Year to date, LM1 is up +108% to 17.5cps (as of mid-Week 40).
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