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WIN METALS LTD (WIN) - From Nickel To High-Grade Gold: Inside Win Metals’ Turnaround Strategy

• Andrew Musgrave

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A near-forgotten gold mine with a modern decline, bought for under a million dollars, and already delivering drill grades that beat expectations—that’s the kind of edge we love to unpack. Steve Norregaard, Managing Director of WIN Metals, joins us to share how the team pivoted from nickel exploration to a high-grade gold strategy built around speed, grade, and smart capital use. We dig into the Radio Gold Mine acquisition, why the existing infrastructure matters, and how a “soft start” could put ounces back into production by mid next year.

We walk through the first 9,000 metres of drilling at Radio, the plan to recalculate resources early in the new year, and the path to a clear mine plan shortly after. Steve explains why Repeater could be a northeast extension of the main Radio structure and how deeper hits, including a metre at 14 g/t, support a bigger system than first thought. The conversation then shifts to the Kimberley, where the Butchers Creek scoping study outlines around 200,000 recoverable ounces from a 250,000-ounce resource, a C1 cost near A$2,500/oz, and strong project metrics at current Australian gold prices—all while funding a new A$70 million plant.

If you care about near-term production, margin resilience, and exploration that actually feeds a mine plan, this one’s for you. We cover the funding runway, upcoming drill news, a maiden resource at Radio, and the staged development that keeps dilution in check. Plus, we talk optionality: the nickel and lithium assets remain in the portfolio, ready for a price turn that could unlock value fast. Subscribe, share with a friend who follows ASX miners, and leave a quick review to tell us what you want us to analyse next.

Andrew Musgrave

Welcome back to ASX Briefs, the podcast that brings Australia's listed companies into focus. And today we're joined by Steve Norregaard, the MD at WIN Metals Limited, a Western Australian-based mining company with a diverse portfolio of high-grade assets. Steve, great to have you with me today and welcome to the ASX Briefs podcast.

 

Steve Norregaard

Thank you very much, Andrew.

 

Andrew Musgrave

Now, Steve, for listeners that may be unfamiliar with WIN Metals, can you provide a brief overview of the company?

 

Steve Norregaard

Okay, we started life as a nickel explorer under the guise of Widgie Nickel. However, the demise in the nickel price probably about two years ago has led us to have to pivot in a different direction. And over the course of the last 12 to 18 months, we've now got ourselves in a wonderful position with two great gold projects while still retaining our mainstay nickel projects that we listed with. The company now, we retain our ticker code of WIN, but the company is now known as WIN Metals.

 

Andrew Musgrave

Okay, and the company has had a highly productive few months, concluding with the acquisition of the Radio Gold Mine and now releasing outstanding initial drill results. So, can you start by providing new investors with an overview of the significance of the results from maiden drill campaign at the project?

 

Steve Norregaard

Great. Yeah, well, Radio Mine, probably only just on a month now that we've had the project, we acquired it for a very, very attractive entry price of under a million dollars with a trailing royalty. We got on the ground probably three months before we actually concluded the transaction, and we're just about to finish our first 9,000-meter RC drill program. Only a week ago we announced the first of probably another two or three announcements pertaining to those drill results. The announcement that we made last week, we got some great results that have far exceeded our expectations, particularly with regards to the overall grade of the results. I should recount that the Radio mine produced 70,000 ounces at 38.5 grams per ton as a head grade. So, it's got a very, very good production history, very, very high grade. And the outcome of the drill program, this 9,000-meter program, is we've identified more high-grade, which in this elevated gold market is great news for the company. And it only adds to our production impetus. We've we acquired the asset, and our strategic direction was to firstly invest in exploration because we wanted to understand the total endowment. We were looking at some near-surface satellite resources that we could potentially mine in conjunction with the already established underground mine, and that process is now complete, the drillings complete. We will recalculate the resource base in early in the new year, and I’m of the view that we will come out with a clear and concise mine plan as to how we're going to execute a restart  in two or three months thereafter. The plan or the hope is that we will be turning dirt in one form or another by mid-next year. So, we've got this new acquisition back into production.

 

Andrew Musgrave: 03:39

Now, the acquisition of the mine included existing infrastructure like a modern decline access, a partially constructed processing facility, and operational equipment. So, how does having this infrastructure in place influence your strategy for a rapid restart and feed into future mining studies?

 

Steve Norregaard

Well, to have a decline in place, we can go underground now, put our hand on the ore body. What it really means is that all of the sunk capital has already been invested in this project, and the amount of capex that we require in order to be able to get production restarted is absolutely nominal. As part of the transaction, we've got mining equipment, generators, compressors. We've even acquired the Bullfinch Tavern, which is   we currently accommodate our people. So, it's such a soft start.

 

Andrew Musgrave

Excellent. Okay, and if we now focus on the Repeater prospect, your results confirm significant zones of high-grade gold mineralization. So, what makes Repeater so important and why are you confident that this area offers major resource growth potential?

 

Steve Norregaard

Well, Repeater was mined back in the 1900s, and we were basically left with a shallow open pit excavation in place. We had a sneaking suspicion that it potentially was a continuation of the actual main Radio structure in a northeasterly direction, and I'm glad to say that the deeper drilling that we've done now tends to suggest that that could be the case. All we were trying initially to do was to prove that we had a small open pit there, but we've in fact drilled some deeper holes and got, I think, one meter at 14 grams at about 70 to 80 vertical meters below surface, which gives us a huge impetus to suggest that this system's a lot bigger than what we originally contemplated. And, through the fullness of time, we'll do more drilling in the foreseeable future, and hopefully we can expand this resource, get it into production and harvest and get a positive cash flow out of this project.

 

Andrew Musgrave

Okay, now other than these projects, are there any other mining opportunities on the horizon that you may be looking at?

 

Steve Norregaard

Well, if I cast my mind back, the first acquisition on our pivot into gold was the Butchers Creek project up in the Kimberley region. And only today we announced a scoping study, which coincides with the 12-month anniversary of acquiring the project. Great outcome. Again, another project where we got on the ground early, did a drill crow program. We've got a significant portion of the resource base into a high confidence indicated category that allowed us on the main resource to consider that in from a feasibility perspective. We've been able to demonstrate that we are able to mine some 200,000 ounces of the 250,000 ounce resource at Butchers Creek. A mining inventory of about 3.3 million tons at two grams per tonne. A project that at a $3,500 US gold price, a 65-cent exchange rate, or in Australian terms, $5,350 odd dollars an ounce. The project will generate $288 million of free cash flow, an NPV of $143, an IRR of 25%. But that's only the starting point. That or I should say that includes building a $70 million processing plant to process the ore. Very, very positive outcome. Alot of exploration upside. One of the other resources on that project, the golden crown, which has got a current inferred resource of about 38,000 ounces, is now tailor-made to fit into that study. But we'll get on the ground up in the Kimberley region after the wet season in March, April of next year and concentrate on that golden crown. What we've been able to demonstrate is you don't need a million-ounce resource in order to be able to have a viable goal project. The Butchers Creek Resource has now been able to support a project that has a C1 cost of about $2,500 an ounce, big operating margin, which has more than adequately demonstrated it can pay off the capital to get a new project going. So, we'll push ahead with that project. It'll take a little bit longer for us to get up and going, probably 18 months to get ourselves with a clear path forward. The Radio project, we can get that into production. So, we've got a good runway to and good exposure to the gold price going forward.

 

Andrew Musgrave

Okay, now just to wrap things up, shifting to the wider company, you completed a major placement and are expecting a final payment of $500,000 from a divestment. So, what are the keys catalysts and news flows investors should look out for over the next 12 months?

 

Steve Norregaard

Well, that money's coming in the door this month, which is a good thing. We've got probably two to three announcements pertaining to the exploration results. A declaration of a maiden resource at radio early in the new year, leading to a production restart by mid-next year. Like I said, we'll get on the ground and start drilling up in the Kimberley in the probably the second quarter of next calendar year. And in the meanwhile, we've got a nickel and lithium resource that sits comfortably in our portfolio. Might not have any real value in terms of the market right at the moment, but anyone that's been involved in nickel, it can turn on a dime, the nickel price can go up, and that project gives us could generate a lot of value for shareholders in the not too far distant future. So great position to be in.

 

Andrew Musgrave

Okay, Steve. Well, thanks for your time today. It's been great to chat, and we look forward to further updates from WIN Metals in the upcoming months.

 

Steve Norregaard

Good on you, Andrew. Thank you very, very much.

 

Andrew Musgrave

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