The Hayes Creek and Fountain Head zinc-gold-silver projects are located in a favourable mining jurisdiction in the Pine Creek region of Northern Territory, 170km by road south of Darwin. Comprising 25 wholly-owned mineral leases including the Iron Blow and Mt Bonnie VMS deposits which were acquired in 2014 from Newmarket Gold NT Holdings Pty Ltd, a subsidiary of Canadian-listed Kirkland Lake Gold Ltd.

In June 2021 PNX completed a Preliminary Feasibility Study (PFS) that supports the sequential development of its 100% owned Fountain Head gold (Stage 1) and Hayes Creek gold-silver-zinc Projects (Stage 2). Refer ASX Announcement 12 July 2017 for full details of the PFS.

Fountain Head and the Hayes Creek Project are both located within the boundaries of the Ban Ban Springs and Douglas pastoral stations approximately 13km east of the Stuart Highway and 170km by road south of Darwin in the Northern Territory,

The results of the PFS confirm and enhance the results of the Scoping Study completed by the Company in March 2016. Refer ASX Announcement 31 March 2016 and comprises 25 Mineral Leases (ML’s) covering an area of 1,246.6 hectares providing continuous coverage of, and unrestricted access over the Fountain Head, Glencoe, Mt Bonnie and Iron Blow deposits. All Project areas are 100% owned by PNX and located on granted ML’s.

To complement the PNX mineral resources, in April 2021 PNX executed a sale and purchase agreement to acquire the Glencoe mineral leases from Ausgold Trading Pty Ltd, which is located only 3 km’s north of the Fountain Head ML.

The PFS assumes the construction of a carbon in leach (CIL) plant and infrastructure capable of treating 750ktpa and will process the near surface oxide and free-milling gold & silver ore from the open-pit mines at Fountain Head, Mt Bonnie and Glencoe. The life of this Stage 1 is initially 5-years and through further exploration, acquisition or toll treating the plant will be available for processing additional gold & silver bearing ore.

Subsequent to the treatment of the currently defined oxide gold and silver resources in Stage 1, the Plant will be upgraded to incorporate a sulphide flotation circuit capable of processing the Hayes Creek high-grade gold-silver-zinc massive sulphide ores from Mt Bonnie and Iron Blow into two valuable product streams, a zinc concentrate and a precious metals concentrate (Stage 2). The concentrates will be trucked to the Port of Darwin and then shipped to international markets for sale and smelting and refining.

The life of mine production estimates with metals recovered to doré and concentrates is 250,500 ounces of gold, 11.4 million ounces of silver, and 116,300 tonnes of zinc.

The combined projects have a mine life of 10-years and an unleveraged Pre-tax NPV8% of $171 million. Based on the following commodity prices, gold US$1,733/oz, silver $25/oz, zinc $1.31lb and foreign exchange rate of US$0.77/A$1.00.

The Fountain Head Environmental Impact Statement has been submitted with Project Government and Environmental approvals anticipated in late 2021. First gold production is targeted from mid-2022.

Drilling Results – Refer News for all ASX Announcements containing results of drilling programs at Iron Blow and Mt Bonnie since acquisition in 2014.