The next mineral boom in South Australia could cover a large swathe of ground east of Adelaide and extending into the State’s South East.

Hillgrove Resources’ Exploration Manager, Mr Peter Rolley, said the area – known as the Delamerian – stretched from north of Morgan in the mid north to south of Keith.

It is endowed with a range of minerals including copper, gold, molybdenum and zinc – but has not been the subject of any serious regional exploration for around 20 years.

“Yet it promises substantial upside as new exploration technologies are now available and proving their worth, it has gold and copper outcrop particularly in various areas, and only has shallow cover of between 60-100metres over much of it,” Mr Rolley said.

“These technologies include new basement mapping tools and new geochemical methodologies.

“In addition, it has caught the attention of the consortium of geologically focused research university interests called Minex CRC. Their work will also be complimented by a Section 15 moratorium which is in place across the Delamerian.

According to Mr Rolley, this means that while new data is being collected, no explorer or miner can peg fresh ground that they don’t already hold. As a result, no new exploration venture will have a competitive advantage until the new technical information is released to market.

“Hillgrove holds more than 6,000 square kilometres of tenement in the terrain and has access to copper and molybdenum mineralisation that has never been drilled,” said Mr Rolley.

The area already hosts Hillgrove’s existing Kanmantoo copper mining operations with the Company looking to expand its on-ground work around the vicinity of the mine and elsewhere across numerous targets in the Delamerian.

“The area has extensive copper fertility particularly and has been identified by Geoscience Australia and the US Geological Survey as the third most prospective porphyry belt in Australia,” explained Mr Rolley.

“It is a potential new province where it will be important to work from the known to the unknown as it hosts multiple mineralising events and complexity.

“We believe however that within some locations of the Delamerian, there is potential for large-scale magmatic related copper gold mineral deposits.”