RFI’s strategic holdings in Tasmania

A company being prepared for a listing on the Australian Stock Exchange is the dominant leaseholder on Tasmania’s most influential geological sequence — the Mt. Read volcanics — and has its hands on advanced reserves and a treatment plant.

Resource Finance & Investments (RFI) has six project areas on the Mt. Read volcanics in western Tasmania, extending from Penguin, on the north coast, to Queenstown, 130 km to the south.

By virtue of its holdings, it is in a region that has produced significant volcanogenic massive sulphide (VMS) base metal deposits or intrusive-related deposits associated with granites. Hybrid targets such as skarn nickel deposits are also stumbled upon.

In picking up some of the prime target areas, RFI caught many of the majors napping, for Tasmania, in exploration terms, has been abandoned by the Australian mainland in recent years.

Not only has RFI got a good land package, it struck an alliance with Geoinformatics Exploration (GXL-V), a company developed by West Australian geoscientist Nick Archibald. Geoinformatics’ work includes a three-dimensional geological model of Tasmania.

While this gives RFI a leg up on the competition, the company also has a letter of intent with mineral-processing group Intec (INL-A) for access to a flotation concentrator and infrastructure at the Hellyer mine, including a core library that RFI believes could prove valuable during regional exploration.

RFI Managing Director Michael Rosenstreich, a geology graduate from the now-mothballed Otago School of Mines in New Zealand, earned his masters of mineral and energy economics in Australia. He worked for several mining companies before joining resource banker Rothschild. He returned to exploration and consulting in 2002.

He tells The Northern Miner that two projects share the peak of RFI’s “pyramid” and both have established resources: the unmined copper-rich section of the S-Lens at the Que River mine (which was mothballed seven years ago); and the Mt. Charter gold-silver deposit, to the south.

S-Lens has a total resource of 370,000 tonnes grading 1.7% copper, 1.4% lead, 4.2% zinc, 64 grams silver per tonne and 0.3 gram gold. An RFI document states that this, in terms of current metal prices, amounts to a copper-equivalent grade of 4%, or an in situ resource of 14,400 tonnes copper metal.

Mt. Charter has a gold-silver system that surface sampling outlined as measuring 500 by 250 metres. RFI believes it could be drilled to provide another early source for metal recovery.

One highlight included an intercept of 58 metres grading 1.8 grams gold and 31 grams silver, while trenching outlined 50 metres of 2.1 grams gold and 62 grams silver.

Rosenstreich says the now-defunct Aberfoyle, owner of the Hellyer and Que River operations, did not focus on precious metals exploration and that gold mineralization at Mt. Charter has never been systematically tested.

Further down the pyramid, in what RFI brands as “extensional exploration,” there are targets for expanding Hellyer, Que River and Mt. Charter.

One prospect seen as a target with identified minerals was the Magnet mine, which is an extension of the historic Mt. Bischoff tin-lead mine at Waratah. Others include: North Rosebery, for gold, silver and lead near the operating Rosebery mine; Leven Bridge (gold-silver-lead-zinc); and Mt. Selina (gold-copper).

RFI has the support of Perth-based stockbroker D.J. Carmichael for the float. Carmichael recently gained London-Manchester stockbroker W.H. Ireland as a 50% stakeholder.

Joining Rosenstreich on the board of directors are veteran West Australian mining executive Don Boyer as chairman and, as non-executive directors, Carmichael’s executive chairman Craig McGown and Intec’s business and development manager Kieran Rodgers.

RFI plans to raise A$5 million for further exploration.

— The author is a freelance writer based in Perth, Western Australia.