Tempest Minerals Brochure i51 Spring 23

EXECUTIVE INSIGHT

Reaching

Down for Great Resources

Tempest Minerals is pushing ahead full steam with its portfolio of highly promising projects in Western Australia and beyond. Romana Moares spoke to Managing Director Don Smith about their current achievements and their ambitious plans for the future.

Down for Great Resources

Reaching

Tempest Minerals is pushing ahead full steam with its portfolio of highly promising projects in Western Australia and beyond. Romana Moares spoke to Managing Director Don Smith about their current achievements and their ambitious plans for the future.

Tempest Minerals Ltd (TEM) is an Australian mineral exploration company with a diversified portfolio of projects in Western Australia for precious, base and energy metals, and with exposure to projects in other parts of the world.

The company listed via an initial public offering (IPO) in 2017 under the name Lithium Consolidated Mineral Exploration Limited (Li3) with the goal of feeding the rapidly growing battery mineral industry. Li3 went on to acquire multiple lithium projects on 3 continents and has had a string of successful exploration and divestment transactions.

In 2019, faced with a challenging lithium market, the board decided to expand the strategic focus of the company in a more diversified direction and began looking at other commodities such as copper. At the end of 2019, Li3 acquired private exploration company Warrigal Mining and has subsequently continued to develop a portfolio of precious and base metals projects in Western Australia to complement the existing energy metal projects.

Rebranded for the future

In August 2020, shareholders decided to rebrand the company to Tempest Minerals Ltd to better reflect the evolved business and its more diverse commodity focus. In the same year, the company got a new Managing Director – Don Smith, a geologist and entrepreneur with over 20

years’ experience in the mining industry.

Don has worked in operational, development, exploration and consultant roles for junior through to multinational firms spanning 6 continents and numerous commodities, including base and precious metals and energy minerals.

He has been the founding director of a number of private and public resource companies including the successful listings on the ASX of Platypus Resources and Alderan Resources. He is currently involved with several start-ups and also consults to the industry.

With a Bachelor of Science degree from Newcastle University and a Master of Business Administration from the Australian Institute of Business, he is also a member of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy and a member of the Australian Institute of Geoscientists.

“I actually grew up in mining, with both my parents operating small mines, so I was exposed to that industry from a very young age,” he says, while admitting that career-wise, mining was not his first choice. He enrolled at university to study languages and only later switched to geology.

After working in var-

ious countries around the globe, he eventually returned to Australia where he founded Xeni, an incubator for creating new projects and new companies. One of those projects became Tempest, just at the onset of the global pandemic.

“Although we have a range of other activities, Tempest Minerals is my core focus,” he says. Speaking about TEM’s activities, he explained that the company’s current focus is on its copper and gold exploration projects, which span more than 900 km2 within four areas in the prolific Yalgoo Green Belt region in

Western Australia. However, TEM continues to be involved in Lithium projects in the Yilgarn region –which TEM recently announced will be divested into a new ASX listed company named Electra Minerals Ltd.

The sustainable way

The Yalgoo region is the location of the Messenger, Meleya, War West and Euro projects prospective for multiple commodities including: copper, gold, base and precious metals; the adjacent Mt Magnet, a world-class gold and precious metals mining district, is home to the Range project.

Don explained that the potential of the region was discovered purely by chance. “My business partner was driving one day through the area, and saw some guys digging on the side of the road with a machine. Although this supposed to be an area with nothing in it, he saw that the wall of a shallow pit that one of the guys had dug was nearly solid gold.”

Realising that the former governmental geological maps of that area were wrong, the company increased its landholding in the Yalgoo region and started doing studies to better understand the geology.

Mr Smith pointed out that Tempest Minerals had always been keen on using innovative scientific methods to drive economic discoveries, employing the latest technologies which hold the potential to upgrade and expand its operations. As such, in 2021 the company had identified Electron Paramagnetic Resonance (EPR) surveys as a potential tool to carry out non-invasive exploration across its Yalgoo and Mt Magnet projects.

“ “ EXECUTIVE INSIGHT MAGAZINE I SPRING 2023

The results from the first phase of the EPR survey show around 250 metal-related anomalies. Following the survey results and their validation, the company started conducting drilling programs in 2022, to be followed also in 2023.

The digital approach has also helped the company stay at the forefront of sustainability; preserving the natural environment has been a highly important aspect of its operations. “Most of our projects are located in remote areas with many protected species so naturally we strive to work so as not to disturb the local environment,” said Mr Smith.

He acknowledged that from its very beginning, Tempest has been committed to the highest social and environmental standards and practices, believing that mineral exploration and sustainability are not mutually exclusive nor adversarial in purpose but are instead complementary. Resources – in particular minerals, such as lithium for energy storage and copper for electronics – are important for technologies that will enable a sustainable future.

On a growth trajectory

Tempest Minerals is well on track with its ambitious plans, he affirmed, saying that the company is currently progressing its Meleya Project, one of the most exciting base and precious metal exploration opportunities in Australia today.

Together with the state government co-funded (EIS) program, the first two holes were drilled into this area in early 2022 discovering copper and other minerals. Since then, the company has started wide-space drilling across the whole region. “The project is very exciting for us as given the survey results, there is a greater opportunity to find minerals in that region than was previously thought,” he reflected.

In addition to Western Australia, the company has also exposure to several projects in Africa and North America, and in Spring 2022 entered into a conditional agreement to invest in a Papua New Guinea focussed companyLole Mining (recently renamed to Tolu Minerals Ltd) and its portfolio of three high-grade gold and silver assets, with short-term production and exploration potential.

Mr Smith said that the company has invested AU$1 million in the venture and remains a key shareholder in Tolu which is

expected to list on the ASX in early 2022.

“This is a major milestone development for Tempest and our shareholders.

While we are pushing ahead with our exploration fronts at the Yalgoo and other regional projects in Western Australia, we

have identified this opportunity to drive growth through exposure to a near-term gold producer which is in line with our

ambitious strategy to make more discoveries, and transform from a small company to a medium-size operator,” he concluded.