True North Copper has fired the rigs on its Mt Oxide project, located in northwest Queensland, kicking off a new joint drilling campaign so as to grow the Aquila cobalt, silver and copper discovery in Australia.
The phase one program will consist of 6000m of drilling across 23 holes – 18 reverse circulation RC and five diamond – with Aquila as the primary target.
Previous drilling at Aquila also returned thick, punchy hits comprising 145m at 0.75% copper, 0.12% cobalt and 2.9 grams per tonne – g/t silver from 28m in one hole. A second hole returned 59m @ 1.77% copper and 0.04% cobalt as well as 5.2 g/t silver from 134 m.
Aquila is located within a well-defined copper and cobalt as well as silver corridor extending for over 10 km and connecting into the well-known Vero resource, 4 km to the southwest.
Vero happens to be a high-grade copper-silver-cobalt deposit, having 15.03 million tonnes at 1.46% copper and 10.59 g/t silver. It contains a cobalt resource of 9.15 million tonnes at 0.23% cobalt.
The copper and silver inventory of Vero is 220,000 tonnes of copper and 5 million ounces of silver having high-grade, ongoing mineralisation at a minimum of 250 m below the surface.
True North said the diamond drilling can assist in sharpening its awareness of structural controls on mineralisation at Aquila and help with modelling and future development studies. The RC drilling is going to test down-dip and along strike extensions.
With Aquila the present headline act and Vero an established resource base, True North is convinced the Mt Oxide district is indeed shaping up to be the biggest and highest-grade greenfield copper discovery in the region for over 20 years and has the potential to stand independently as a sulphide development asset.
Importantly, both Aquila and Vero host high-grade shoots that stay open at depth and along the strike, hence keeping an abundance of blue sky in the system as the company steps out with each program.
True North was first to flag the discovery of the Aquila deposit in mid-2025 after its first RC program uncovered considerable mineralisation and a new target area within the wider Mt Oxide corridor.
Since then, drilling and geophysics have extended the mineralised trend to an excess of 1.3 km along a structural corridor with over 10 km of prospectivity and numerous high-priority targets.
The other prospects, Acanthis along with Apollo, are on parallel trends on either side of Aquila, providing additional follow-up possibilities as the company works its way along the corridor.
The phase one program as part of the copper discovery in Australia is expected to run from April to June or July 2026, with the assay findings being incorporated into revised models as they are obtained, keeping in mind the target pipeline. Notably, the phase two program later in 2026 is anticipated to keep the momentum rolling. Management intends to use the outcomes of induced polarisation geophysics and geochemistry to improve phase two, stepping out further from Aquila, drilling Vero extensions as well as testing regional prospects such as Rhea and Apollo as well as Acanthis.
It is worth noting that the new campaign from True North comes after it, two weeks ago, moved to strengthen its hold on the Cloncurry district through agreeing to acquire Renegade Exploration’s 22.5% interest in the Carpentaria joint venture.
The binding agreement to acquire the Carpentaria JV share comprises a 35% interest in the key Mongoose tenement containing an inferred resource of 3.1 million tonnes grading 0.55% copper and 0.07 g/t gold.
Global miner Glencore is the senior partner in the joint venture via its wholly owned subsidiary Mount Isa Mines, which holds a 77.5% interest and happens to have a 40-day right of first refusal so as to match the deal.
The Cloncurry copper project, which is True North’s wholly owned, on the other hand, hosts the Taipan deposit and is adjacent to the Carpentaria joint venture with a tenement boundary separating both the projects.
The acquisition of Renegade’s interest by True North is targeted at combining the development plans for Mongoose and Taipan, which might result in a bigger, more efficient open pit at Cloncurry when the deal is settled. As the drill rods turn and phase two plans shape up, True North is poised for a steady supply of news through mid-year as it pursues its next step-up in terms of scale at Mt Oxide.