MinEx Collaborative Research Centre
In 2018 SER joined the MinEx Cooperative Research Centre (MinEx CRC), the world’s largest mineral exploration collaboration. The $218 million collaboration is underpinned by $50 million in Federal Government funding. Participants include major mining companies (BHP, South32, Anglo American); the Mining Equipment, Technology and Services (METS) sector; research organisations; together with Geoscience Australia and all the Geological Surveys in Australia. SER is an active contributor to the CRC through our representation on the Science Advisory Council (SAC), and by leading efforts to attract an industry based postgraduate student via a company sponsored project.
The MinEx CRC has three primary research programs; Drilling Technologies, Data from Drilling and the National Drilling Initiative (NDI). The National Drilling Initiative (NDI) recently delivered a successful drilling campaign in the East Tennant region in close proximity to SER’s Tennant Creek projects. SER’s Executive Chairman Stuart Rechner provided commentary on the “stunning results” from the NDI program in an article that appeared in MiningNews.net which can be found here.
The NDI program now turns to the Delamerian Orogen in South Australia in 2021 before heading to Western Australia to cover the Far East Yilgarn.
UltraFine+ TM Next Gen Analytics for Discovery
In 2021 SER joined the UltraFine+ TM Next Gen Analytics project which is a collaboration with CSIRO. The project combines the cutting edge of UltraFine+ TM soil analyses with intelligent data integration tools to improve mineral explorers’ ability to rapidly QAQC their results, assess these results in a landscape context, create exploration indices and identify the best targets. SER will utilise this technique alongside traditional geophysics to guide drill targeting in areas with shallow cover – in 2022 this will include the Achilles 1 target at our South Cobar project. Further information on the project can be found here.
East Tennant Focused PhD Research Project
As part of SER’s commitment to exploration and advancing geoscientific knowledge in the East Tennant region, the company has committed to sponsoring a MinEx CRC Research student from the University of Tasmania Centre for Ore Deposits and Earth Sciences (CODES). The PhD program aims to unravel the crustal architecture and tectonic evolution of the East Tennant region. The project will integrate multiple geological and geophysical datasets collected between 2017 and 2020 as part of Geoscience Australia’s ‘Exploring for the Future’ program and MinEx CRC’s ‘National Drilling Initiative’ along with shared company data and drill samples from explorers in the region. The research will culminate in the publishing of a mineral prospectivity analysis to identify areas with a higher potential to host mineral deposits.
