Austral Resources Australia Ltd. announced that the Austral Board has approved a Scoping Study for the Lady Colleen (LC) Development Project. The scoping study has commenced to assess the potential of the LC Mineral Resource to support an open cut mining project. Lady Colleen is located on an existing Mining Lease (ML90170) within 2 km of the Mt Kelly processing facility where Austral is currently producing copper cathode from the Anthill mine.

Existing infrastructure, which sits within granted mining leases, will also be available for the Lady Colleen project, including workshop, haul road, ROM pad, and camp. The current diamond drilling program at Lady Colleen is targeting extensions to the existing Mineral Resource Estimate as well as upgrading portions of the Inferred Resource to Indicated and Measured status. Drill core from the current drilling program will be utilised to create a composite that is representative of the Lady Colleen deposit, that will be used for flotation test work and to test the metallurgical characteristics of the ore.

Lady Colleen contains a JORC Mineral Resource Estimate of 7.9MT at 0.84% Cu. The quoted resource was calculated in 2013 by the previous mine owner and released by Austral in its IPO prospectus. Work is currently underway with an independent resource geologist to incorporate the results from the existing drilling into an updated Mineral Resource Estimate for Lady Colleen.

Austral are targeting a lower tonnage, higher grade sulphide resource that could be economically mined by open pit.