Peel Mining Limited (ASX:PEX) Managing Director Rob Tyson talks about the company's projects in the Cobar Superbasin of western NSW, drill results at Wirlong and Mallee Bull deposits and its work leading up to a concept study and pre-feasibility study 2H of 2022 ahead of mining licence application.Thanks for having me today. A pleasure to be talking about Peel Mining, and the company's aspirations. Peel is all about trying to become the next base metal development company, copper-centric, in the Cobar Basin, in Western New South Wales.
And next slide, next couple of slides, please. We'll run through that. So, a corporate snapshot. We've got about 420 million shares on issue. That follows a recent capital raising, where we raised just over $20 million. Cash at the end of the quarter was about $20 million, with a little bit more cash coming in after the quarter. But that's about our net position at the moment, a market cap at the moment around $130 million. Some interesting major shareholders. Hampton Hill Mining & Associates, there's really a gentleman who sits behind that company, and is a stalwart in support of our ventures. St. Barbara Limited are also on our register, just under 10%, and directors certainly have skin in the game, at around 9% and Paradise Investments recently became a substantial shareholder in the company. Our four-man board, myself and Jim Simpson, technical expertise, I'm a geologist by training, exploration, geology, primarily in gold and base metals. Jim Simpson joined us, coming up to two years ago, and Jim has fantastic credentials in base metal mining operations.
Next slide, please. So, our land position in the Cobar Basin. The Cobar Basin is around eight hours' drive, west of Sydney. It's a fantastic jurisdiction in which to operate a world-class mining district, and certainly, after Broken Hill, pretty much the most important part of New South Wales in terms of base and precious metal mining. You can see the basin's endowment, really significant gold and base metal production, gold, silver, and base metal production.
Our land position is in the central and southern parts of the Cobar Basin. It's an easy place to work. As I mentioned, there are very large landholdings out there, 20,000 to 100,000 acre properties, pastoral country, fantastic road network to get around on. We also have the Moomba to Sydney gas pipeline. And just up the road is the mining center of Cobar, which has a number of operating mines around it.
Our deposits, which we've discovered over a sort of a 10 year duration that we've been operating in the Cobar Basin. The main deposits malleable were along Southern Nights/Wagga Tank, and May Day. Mallee Bull, we discovered around eight years ago, it's a copper rich deposit. We're drilling there now, to upgrade that resource. We're also drilling for a maiden resource at Wirlong, which is a copper rich system. Then Southern Nights/Wagga Tank, which we discovered about three years ago, three, four years ago, the Southern Nights part of it is a zinc/lead silver rich system, and then, May Day is a gold rich system. Essentially, the Cobar Basin can be thought of as a VMS camp for the geologically minded. And we're proposing a hub and spoke strategy.
Next slide, please. Look, copper's time is now. When I initially put this slide together about a year ago, the copper price was still to move, but the fundamentals behind copper are extraordinary. Basically we are not replacing that is on the global level, were are not replacing the copper that we're consuming with new discoveries. The demand side is really just starting to crank up now. It's a large market, a deep market about 20 million tons of demand a year. And we foresaw, going back a year or so ago, even before that, that there was likely to be a need for a higher price to bring on the new supply that's needed for the decarbonization of the world. Obviously, the copper price has moved significantly over the last six months or so.
Next slide, please. Last year was a year of consolidation for Peel Mining. So we had a number of joint ventures that concluded last year. We bought one out, and the other one, the other partner withdrew, but as a result of the consolidation of our assets through reacquiring 100% of everything, our exposure to copper grew, as well as our relative resource base. This slide was put together pre the copper price movement over the last six months. Copper was already our largest, I guess, economic exposure in terms of metals, but with the copper price movement, I suspect the relative portion of copper is closer to 50% now. That is without the addition of Wirlong Copper Resource, which is in the works at the moment.
Looking at our resources on the next slide, so this is our current resource base. We have about 13 million tons of global resource amongst, I guess, the four deposits that we have at hand at the moment, Mallee Bull, obviously a copper rich resource, and certainly, one of Australia's highest grade undeveloped copper resources.
But then, cumulatively, we obviously have a significant zinc, lead, silver and gold mineralisation in our, in our asset base. We're aiming to add Wirlong by around the end of the September quarter to this graph, or this table. With that, I guess we're hoping that obviously, the global resource base will increase, but certainly, our exposure to copper will also increase further.
Next slide, please. Our plans, our aspirations pivot around this hub and spoke strategy, which is pretty common for, as I mentioned, VMS fields, which is essentially a central milling facility that is sustained through satellite deposits, and I guess, any deposits that could be parked next to the mill, or the mill parked next to them. Essentially what we're looking at is, we're aiming for, hopefully, around a million ton per annum sort of mark is our goal internally, as a throughput rate, and that mill being supported by our deposits that we've discovered today. There's still, I guess, defining to get to a critical mass of indicated resource, so that we can publish a high detailed scoping study. We've completed the drill out on May Day, we're drilling for maiden resource at Wirlong, and we're upgrading our resource at Mallee Bull at the moment, and time permitting, we'll certainly be looking to upgrade the resource at Southern Nights, at the end of the year.
Next slide. What does the potential or conceptual mill look like? Well, this is a flow sheet that GR Engineering put together for us, based off our aspirations. It's a pretty standard flow sheet for a polymetallic deposit, or polymetallic deposits. Essentially, it allows for the recovery or exploitation of all the metals, economic metals that we see. It's a crush and grind combination circuit, and then, gravity recovery for any precious metals that we can achieve there. And then, sequential flotation, with a gold circuit at the back.
We've done some more sorting test work, and it looks like our deposits, certainly the two we've tested, Mallee Bull and Southern Nights, are amenable to all sorting. So we've got further test work planned over the back half of this year. But I'd make the point this is sort of the dream mill, what we want. Eventually, it doesn't bring in all sorting. We've updated this flow sheet since to include all sorting. I guess the other part of this is, that this mill can be staged, depending on the final optimisation of our deposits.
Next slide, please. So Wirlong, we're drilling here for a maiden fibrate copper resource. You can see some of that spectacular copper pyrite, rich mineralisation in that photo on the right. It's a classic Cobar style deposit, a pipelike or chutelike structure. What we think is we've got multiple lenses, but essentially, it starts quite shallow at around 60 meters below surface, some of the high grade copper, and we've seen good widths of high grade copper down to 600 meters below surface.
We're drilling there now, and the next slide shows you some of the high grade intercepts we've achieved since discovery, and more recently, since our resource definition drilling program commenced. So some spectacular numbers, certainly amongst the best copper results being reported in Australia at the moment, and we're very excited by the potential of this system.
As an analog, we see a significant, or we see a lot of the traits of what's seen up in Cobar, particularly at CSA, applied to this style of mineralisation we're seeing here. So, the CSA mine, discovered in 1870, 150 years old, and been running as a modern mine for the last 50 years. Most of it was discovered below 800 meters below surface, and we're certainly nowhere near that depth at the moment, so we're very excited by the long-term potential for Wirlong.
Looking at the next page, which is Mallee Bull. Mallee Bull was our first discovery in the Cobar Basin, and again, it's a sort of a pipelike structure. We own the land that sits above Mallee Bull, so 20,000 acres of essentially freehold land, which we bought a number of years ago, and we've got a substantial resource of just under seven million tons, at just under 2% copper here. The deeper parts of it, so 350 meters below surface, remain in third. That's a focus of our drilling at the moment, but certainly this deposit is open at depth, and a long strike.
The next slide gives a bit of a long section view, and some of the historic hits that we produced, during our discovery and subsequent drill drilling of the mineralisation at Mallee Bull. As I mentioned, a very high grade resource overall, but some spectacular drill hits. The true width on these holes is 30-40%, generally speaking, of those downhole intercepts, so still, really, really substantial, true widths, but spectacular mineralisation we saw in this deposit. We're back there drilling now. It would be fair to say that if history is a guide, we'll see some spectacular drill hole intercepts coming out of this over the next three to six months.
Next slide, please. So Southern Nights-Wagga Tank, third string to the bow, it's essentially one mineral system, although two discrete deposits, hence, the dual name. It's a substantial resource of about five million tons of mineralisation there, that we ran through stope shape optimising to put together. Essentially, it's a mineable resource, as we like to term it, so we've put it through the ringer to produce that resource.
There's potential for open pittable mineralisation, but certainly, when you look at the long section on the next slide, you can see, the scale of the system is significant to open in all directions. Like most VMS deposits, they generally grow over time, if you can sustain exploration. We certainly see every opportunity for this reason to grow into the future. There's high grade mineralisation associated with this. If you get the time to have a look back on some of our results, if you're unfamiliar with us, you'll see some spectacular draw hits came out of this, as well. It really is a great addition to our resources spice in the Cobar Basin.
The next deposit, May Day, look, this was where we first commenced the exploration. It's a VMS system. Again, it's had the top of it mind off for a heap leach gold operation around 20 years ago. There's a remnant resource there, but we've got a substantial high quality resource that was constrained by a pit optimisation and underground stope shape optimisation. We haven't drilled very deep here at all, only to about 290 meters below surface ourselves.
And the next slide gives a long cross-section through the deposit. You can see the pit that constrains the conceptual pit constraining the resource. These are some of our resource drill out results, certainly, some great results in there, but it's a nice addition to our resource base, and certainly, their long-term potential is excellent here.
Looking at our forward program on the next slide, look, abundant copper drawer results over the next six months, six to nine months. We'll have resource upgrades. We'll have a maiden resource for Wirlong, and a resource upgrade for Mallee Bull. I anticipate we'll get a resource upgrade out for Southern Nights-Wagga Tank, as well.
All of that leading to the next slide, which is, where we see where we want to be by the end of next year. All this work taking place this year to put us in a position to deliver a concept study, and then a pre-feasibility study by the backend of next year, in advance of hopefully submitting environmental impact statement and mining license applications for a new development. And that's the Peel story.
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