New figures show the amount of money being spent on mineral exploration in Australia has surpassed the peak of the last mining boom.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) says $1.08 billion was spent on exploration during the September quarter.
That is $23.8 million more than the previous record of $1.06 billion set during the June quarter of 2012.
Association of Mining and Exploration Companies chief executive Warren Pearce said the sector was showing no signs of slowing down.
"The actual takeaway from this boom and the last boom is that it's much broader across commodities," he said.
"We've seen the critical minerals element come in. We've got a really strong focus on gold.
"Last time around, it was a few commodities driving the majority of the spend. This time around, we've got exploration happening across a much wider range of minerals."
Greenfields exploration — the search for new mineral fields — was up 9.7 per cent at $344 million for the September quarter.
Gold continues to be the most sought-after commodity while demand for critical minerals like lithium, rare earths, nickel and copper is on the rise.
"Of every exploration dollar, about 35 cents was going towards gold, and 26 of those cents, so about two-thirds, was being spent in Western Australia," Mr Pearce said.
"And in truth, I don't really see that changing much.
"Probably over the next couple of quarters, we might see a little bit of a drop away."
New discovery on global scale
Perth-based Chalice Mining made the discovery on farmland and saw its stock surge on the ASX from 15 cents to just shy of $10 a share.
On Tuesday its shares are trading about $5.57, valuing Chalice Mining at $2.19 billion.
Speaking at the company's AGM on November 23, Chalice Mining chairman Derek La Ferla described the Gonneville deposit as "one of the largest nickel sulphide discoveries worldwide in over 20 years and the largest PGE discovery in Australian history".
During the 2021–22 financial year, Chalice Mining says it drilled 136,200 metres at Julimar.
"Our exploration team hasn't really paused in the last two and a half years since the discovery, and yet still there is significant potential to grow the current resource base and identify further deposits over more than 30 kilometres of largely untested strike length," Mr La Ferla told the AGM.
Gold still in hot demand
In WA's Pilbara region, 10 drill rigs were turning earlier this year at the Hemi gold deposit, which was first discovered near the iron ore hub of Port Hedland in November 2019.
In October, De Grey Mining raised $130 million to fast track further resource drilling and a definitive feasibility study for a new mining operation, likely to cost about $985 million.
A final investment decision is targeted for mid-2023.
Rigs are also turning closer to more traditional gold mining centres, like Kalgoorlie.
Just 14km south of the famous Golden Mile, which was mined from underground for more than a century before its excavation as part of the Super Pit, sits the Feysville gold project.
Its owners, Perth-based Astral Resources, launched a fresh round of diamond drilling at Feysville on November 25, with the nine-hole, 1,500m program to be completed before year's end.
"When the team started to focus on Feysville, our geologists were drawn to the ultramafic unit in the hanging wall, which had only been intersected twice but, on both occasions, had intersected visible gold," Astral Resources managing director Marc Ducler said.
It is part of a plan by Astral Resources to develop a standalone processing hub at Mandilla, 70km south of Kalgoorlie, where the company has an estimated 1.15 million ounces of gold.
"Success at Feysville will further enhance this strategy, opening up an important second growth avenue for the company just south of Kalgoorlie and potentially increasing our resource base with the addition of high-quality ounces that could feed in as future satellite ore source," Mr Ducler said.
