Moonlight to hit ASX boards with Qld gold and NT critical minerals plays

The first off-the-beaten-path cab for the revolving truth tellers will be Clermont, which owns 268 square kilometers of land just west of the similarly named county, nestled within one of Queensland’s most historically productive golden belts.

Although the broader zone produced more than 6.5 million ounces, much of the ground in the Leo Grande Trend (Moonlight’s initial focus) has seen little modern systematic drilling.

The company plans to immediately halt 1,500 meters of reverse circulation drilling in the central Leo Grande area. This drilling was specifically designed to match some of the holes drilled by previous owners and see if some of the historic hits were still retained. And some of those old holes weren’t bad at all.

Studies by Plutonic Resources and Canadian giant Noranda in the early 1990s found that shallow, widely spaced holes were drilled, often to depths below 140 metres, leaving large gaps and unresolved continuity along strike.

Despite limited historical studies, the numbers were encouraging. Intercepts such as 46 meters grading 1 gram per tonne (g/t) gold from near surface, a 22 meter run from 40 meters at 2.25 g/t gold and a 19 meter run from 34 meters at 3.35 g/t gold all indicate a mineralised, simple and fairly open system both at depth and along strike. They also point to a potentially solid string of initial ASX announcements if the company can manage to successfully match or even heal some of these old holes.

The 4-kilometer Leo Grande corridor offers multiple veins with a structural width of approximately 60 meters, providing Moonlight with several logical entry points for the first-pass drilling campaign.

The company will then rapidly expand to a 10,000 meter phase aimed at identifying the first resource in the field. A further 8,500 meters have also been allocated to test two exciting satellite targets in rental buildings.

The first, aptly named Goldfinger, sits on a northern parallel cut to Leo Grande and has previously seen some limited action with the drill bit providing excellent hits, both grading 3.5g/t gold at 18m and running at 6.54g/t gold at 8m from surface.

The second, called Petersens, is located on another parallel cut south of Leo Grande and has had similar success with strikes of 9m grading 3.5g/t gold and 35m grading 1.75g/t gold.

Despite previous drilling success in the 1990s, both targets remain virtually untouched below the oxide zone.

With gold trading at historically record levels and plenty of established processing infrastructure in the wider region, near-surface ounces detected early could position Moonlight favorably for future development scenarios.

But Moonlight is far from a one-trick pony. Its second largest asset, the MacDonnell Ranges rare earth and uranium project in the Northern Territory, is a district-scale package covering more than 3,000 square kilometres.

The apartments are located adjacent to the Teapot Granite Complex, a highly radioactive geological area known for hard rock uranium formations extending into alluvial systems where rare earths and uranium accumulate through long-term cycles of weathering.

Historical surveys of the area recorded rock chip analyzes containing an average of 439 parts per million (ppm) of uranium oxide at a project called the Cockroach Dam, peaking at over 5,300 ppm. Stream sediment sampling also returned uranium values ​​exceeding 2,000 ppm.

Of particular interest in today’s volatile geopolitical climate are rare earth elements, which appear to be abundant in the MacDonnell Ranges. Initial work in the project area also detected strong signatures of rare earth elements in several monazite-rich alluvial zones; total rare earth oxide (TREO) readings exceeded 6,000 ppm.

For a company the size of Moonlight, having this land bank of critical minerals provides a long runway of potential targets, ranging from hard rock systems to basin-related deposits.

The company says it plans to start with low-cost auger drilling, regional mapping, geochemical programs and radiometric interpretation; This is the type of early work that can quickly sharpen target definition without heavy capital expenditures.

Strengthening Moonlight’s credentials is a heavyweight management team led by managing director Greg Starr, an experienced operator who has driven gold, copper, silver, silica and heavy mineral sands ventures on both the ASX and TSX.

The technical horsepower comes from chief geologist Dr. Coming from Bryce Healy.

Packed with exploration luminaries, uranium experts and corporate financiers, the board recommends a leadership group comfortable operating in complex geological and institutional environments.

The capital structure of the new company is simple. The $6 million firm allocation is complemented by a $3 million senior offering to shareholders of Lithium Plus Minerals and Diatreme Resources, the sellers of Moonlight’s two primary assets, while add-on options provide additional leverage to participants. Upon listing, the company expects to generate $10 million in net cash, allocated primarily to drilling and exploration.

Remarkably, Moonlight is keeping the wind in the background, thanks to the support of Perth corporate advisor Leeuwin Wealth and Chinese firm Richlink Capital. Both companies will jointly manage the IPO capital increase.

Leeuwin Wealth is a new face on the West Perth corporate strip, but it has decades-long deal-making power.

The alliance is led by Jane Tandy, a former senior executive at Canaccord Genuity in Perth, and backed by veteran stock whisperer Aaron Constantine, among other prominent Perth corporate finance figures.

And if Leeuwin’s packed launch party in April this year is any guide, the newly formed corporate finance firm is well positioned among Perth’s betting stars.

Commenting on the upcoming IPO, Leeuwin Wealth’s director of corporate finance, Harry O’Donnell, said; ““What particularly excites us about the company is GBM’s commitment to begin a 20,000-metre drilling program in 2026 at the Clermont Gold Project, which is located approximately 120 kilometers from the Twin Hills Project and has not attracted any recent investor interest.”

“The current gold price environment highlights the near-term production potential at the Project, including potential heap leaching and tolling options.”

With drill rigs ready, targets lined up and three trendy commodities, Moonlight is well positioned to ride the current wave of gold and critical minerals when it hits the boards on the ASX in the next few weeks.

But Moonlight, unlike many other greenfield IPO hopefuls, is loaded with some serious brownfield historical exploration that all comes together to scream “drill here.”

With the underdeveloped Queensland goldfield on one side and the large NT critical mineral margin on the other, Moonlight has a lot going for it as it looks to execute its rapid gold resource deployment strategy ahead of significant blue sky critical mineral potential.

And with a plan to prove and verify some old drill holes (one of which has a 46 meter mineralized strike) punters could see early excitement as these news numbers head towards the ASX.

Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: mattbirney@bullsnbears.com.au