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AUSTRALIAN GOLD & COPPER LTD (AGC) - This Silver-Dominant System Could Be Just the Beginning of Multiple Discoveries

• Andrew Musgrave

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Step into the world of one of Australia's most promising precious metals discoveries with Glen Diemar, Managing Director of Australian Gold and Copper (AGC). The company's Achilles discovery in New South Wales is turning heads across the mining sector with extraordinary polymetallic grades—including a jaw-dropping discovery hole featuring 5 meters at nearly 17 g/t gold, 1700 g/t silver, and 15% combined lead and zinc.

What separates AGC from the typical junior explorer is its remarkable financial strength. With $16 million in cash and strong backing from major shareholders GeoZen and New South Resources, the company is executing an exploration program more akin to what you'd expect from a major mining house. This financial firepower enables a comprehensive, multi-discipline approach across an 8-kilometer shear zone that has barely seen modern exploration.

The timing couldn't be better for AGC's silver-dominant system, with precious metals prices reaching record highs week after week. But this story extends far beyond Achilles itself. Glen reveals how the company's systematic exploration could uncover multiple deposits along the shear zone, following the pattern seen throughout the prolific Cobar Basin. Just 130 kilometers north lies the world's third-highest grade copper mine—a tantalizing reminder of the potential prize awaiting successful explorers in this region.


Andrew Musgrave Host

Welcome to another episode of ASX Briefs where we explore the stories behind ASX listed companies and today we're joined by Glen Diemar, the Managing Director of Australian Gold and Copper, a company advancing one of the most exciting silver gold dominant base metal discoveries in New South Wales. AGC's flagship Achilles discovery within the South Cobar project is quickly shaping up to be a regionally significant polymetallic system. With impressive grades, robust gold and base metal hits and an aggressive exploration schedule underway, including air core, RC and diamond drilling. AGC is positioned at the frontier of a potential new mineralised district. Glen, thanks for joining me today and welcome to the ASX Briefs podcast. 

Glen Diemar Guest

Thanks, Andrew. 

Andrew Musgrave Host

Now, Glen, for listeners that may be unfamiliar with Australian Gold and Copper, can you just provide a brief overview of the company? 

Glen Diemar Guest

Yeah, thanks, we're quite unique. We're a New South Wales precious metal explorer focused on our Achilles deposit, silver, dominant and gold, with some base metals as well, the thing that makes us quite unique. There's not many silver explorers on the ASX and we have an incredible cash balance of about $16 million and our largest shareholder, Geozen, and our second largest shareholder, New South Resources, continue to underpin capital raises going in the past and in the future. So, we're quite unique in that way. 

Andrew Musgrave Host

Now the Achilles is delivering some eye-catching numbers, so how would you summarise the significance of recent drill results, particularly those multi-kilogram silver hits? 

Glen Diemar Guest

Oh yeah, it's been wonderful to be a part of that. So, we discovered this in May last year and there's not many drill hits coming out at this grade, at this depth, so really quite shallow. Our discovery hole was five metres at almost 17 grams gold, 1700 grams silver and 15% lead plus zinc, and we've drilled around that. We've got a really nice zone that runs for currently for 650 meters and is open. Obviously not at all those grades, but we have a very nice high-grade zone very close to surface. So, we're finding it. It really does come pretty much right up to surface, so it's very exciting. 

Andrew Musgrave Host

Okay, and there's a lot of emphasis on the silver dominance of the system. So, do you see Achilles as primarily a silver play, or is it shaping up to be more of a polymetallic deposit? 

Glen Diemar Guest

Certainly polymetallic, but silver dominant in that and quite a decent gold component as well, and that's important because gold and silver are really breaking out. They're seeing new highs almost every week, thank you, Donald Trump, and the markets are really starting to recognise that. And couple that with our cash balance, it makes us a really prime candidate for a huge 2025. 

Andrew Musgrave Host

Okay, and you've got multiple layers of exploration underway air core, RC and diamond drilling, geophysics, metallurgy so how do all these pieces come together in your broader strategy? 

Glen Diemar Guest

Yeah, sure, it's really quite exciting and I pinch myself every day that we're just going so rapidly at building these systematic data sets. I guess exploration discovery, our probability of success can be enhanced by doing large multi set of data sets, and big systematic surveys, kind of like what the majors would do. We want to find multiple discoveries further down through the shear zone. We've got about a eight, eight kilometer long shear zone that we're exploring. We're quite confident Achilles probably isn't the only one. So, we're pulling all those data sets together and we've been working really hard in the background over the last two years to pull those together and really that's what led to the Achilles discovery. And now over the next six to 12 months, we'll be really targeting those additional discoveries because we want to track Achilles. It's open in all directions, so we want to track it down, dip and make it bigger. But we also think our real catalyst for growth will be finding the next one and the next one. 

Andrew Musgrave Host

Okay, and just touching on that shear zone, how much of it has actually been drilled and how much of it remains untested?

Glen Diemar Guest

Good question. So there was an explorer who did a little bit of air core in 2007. So that's air core as in shallow drilling and, but only three lines along that eight kilometres. So, we knew that they were getting some significant anomalism or metal in the surface. So, we're doing that air core at 400 metre spacing and then we'll likely infill that to 200 meter spacing and we're just blanketing the whole area because that's what's going to lead to discoveries. So, we really just want to give up our best chance of success. When you couple that with drone magnetics, aeromagnetics, IP, geophysics, and you know we've done it all. We even just recently flew Heliborne EM. So, we're really going to town on it and that should really lead us forward over the next couple of years. 

Andrew Musgrave Host

Okay, and do you envision Achilles becoming a standalone project, or could it evolve into a part of a regional development hub within the Cobar Basin? 

Glen Diemar Guest

Yeah, you really sound like you know, Cobar. These deposits are typically of that sort of 5 to 10 million ton range, but they can often occur almost in clusters along the shear zone, so you want to be exploring multiple of them. There is also, just 120, 130 kilometres north of us, the third highest grade copper mine in the world. That is the CSA Copper Mine owned by Metals Acquisition Corp. And if you look at some of their drill holes, they're again a polymetallic system, but as they go deeper, dominantly copper. So, I mean there, their drill hits are like 10 meters at 10 copper. I mean it's just eye watering. 

I've suggested anyone should go and look at it. Really, that is, you know, the kind of prize that we're going for. It can be silver, gold, dominant at the top and then greyed down into copper at depth. So, these are true polymetallic systems and that can provide a natural hedge as well. So, we never quite know what we're going to get in terms of our metal makeup. But that creates a lot of excitement, a lot of opportunity and, um, you know, it also means that having a different metal mix various other companies in the region, um, you know, we can really market our project to different mills in the region as well. 

Andrew Musgrave Host

Okay, and you touched on your strong cash position earlier on, so that puts you in a strong position. So how does this financial strength enable you to be more strategic with exploration?

Glen Diemar Guest

It really allows us to go be one of the most active junior explorers on the ASX. I mean, our market cap is 50 million now, so about a 35 million enterprise value. But there's not many explorers that are that are really going hard on the exploration at this point in time. So, it really does put us in a fairly unique position. 

Andrew Musgrave Host

Okay, and just to wrap things up, with air core drilling expected to wrap up in April and RC drilling to follow, what are some of the key milestones the company's looking to achieve in the next, say, six to 12 months? 

Glen Diemar Guest

Yeah, sure. So, before this air core we'd only really drilled that sort of 650 metre long Achilles deposit. We're going to be after the air core. We are going to have essentially drilling coverage down about five kilometres of the shear zone. So, we will then bring in the RC rigs, probably multiple of them, and we'll be drilling out Achilles at depth to increase the potential resource size there, but then also being able to drill those additional targets. So, we've got continuous news flow, multiple drill rigs and it's just going to be a very exciting year.

Andrew Musgrave Host

All right, Glen. Well, there's plenty happening, obviously, so congratulations on what you've done so far, and we look forward to further updates in the coming months. 

Glen Diemar Guest

Thank you so much, really appreciate it, Andrew. 

Andrew Musgrave Host

That concludes this episode of ASX Briefs. Don't forget to subscribe and we look forward to catching you on our next episode.