IVR secures heritage clearance for 57M ounce silver project

Our development stage Investment Investigator Silver (ASX: IVR) has now received heritage clearance across its Project in South Australia.

IVR owns 100% of a 57M ounce silver JORC resource with an average grade of 73g/t - one of Australia's highest grade pure play silver projects.

IVR is advanced stage, currently going through the permitting and pre-development work after delivering a Definitive Feasibility Study in March and lodging its Mining Lease Application in August.

Today's heritage clearance covers all of the proposed disturbance areas inside that Mining Lease Application.

It came after six weeks of field work and more than 3,300 walking hours alongside the Gawler Ranges Aboriginal Corporation, and is a key step towards a Native Title Mining Agreement.

(source)

Next for IVR is environmental permitting, with the full project permitting targeted for 2027.

IVR continues to move towards to mine construction

We are backing IVR because the MD (Lachlan Wallace) knows how to get a mine built - especially in South Australia.

He was the Managing Director of Hillgrove Resources, where he led the design, permitting, financing and restart of the Kanmantoo copper mine ~55km southeast of Adelaide.

That was the most recent mine to come into production in South Australia.

Here he is pictured with the first copper concentrate that came out of the ground in February 2024.

(source)

We are now backing him to do it again with IVR, in the same state, in the same permitting and construction environment - this time with a silver asset.

Since the DFS dropped back in March (see our coverage here), the company has:

1. Appointed an engineering partner to take the project from DFS to "construction-ready" (the FEED stage - Front End Engineering Design). (source)
2. Hired a build team - a CFO, a Chief Development Officer with 25 years in project financing, two Project Directors, a Principal Mining Engineer and a Senior Exploration Geologist. (source) 
3. Completed heritage surveys across the full project area, with the Native Title Mining Agreement now in progress. (source) - The Heritage Clearance was granted today (source)
4. Lodged its Mining Lease application with the SA Department for Energy and Mining on 19 August - IVR is targeting completion of the permitting and approvals process during 2027. (source) 
5. Started a big 30,000m drill program to improve its understanding of the project’s resource - more certainty of what is in the ground is very important for would be mine financiers. (source)(source)

So over the next few months we have drill results AND a lot of the final bits of permitting newsflow to look forward to.

Drilling is ongoing, looking to increase confidence in the resource, aiming to bring in more zones to the mine plan to help improve the economics.

Hopefully we see more results like the batch of hits we saw in early September where IVR hit some seriously high silver grades OUTSIDE the current pit design, headlined by 4m at 5,448g/t silver, including one metre at 13,302g/t silver:

(source)

We thought this next batch of drilling would be more about converting IVR's current resource into higher confidence categories.

(from "Indicated" into "Measured" etc - which is what financiers want to see before they lend against a project, and are more willing to fund)

(source)

But it seems IVR has highlighted three different areas around the existing pit that COULD end up coming into its ongoing studies and mine planning:

(source)

What do we want to see IVR do next?

Permitting 🔄

With the DFS published, we will be watching IVR go through all of the permitting workstreams on its project.

We especially want to see the project get a mining licence and an environmental permit granted for the project as soon as possible.

Recently IVR submitted the Mining Lease Application (MLA) (source)

Here are the milestones we are tracking:

1. ✅ Heritage surveys completed (source)
2. 🔄 Environmental permits
3. 🔄 Project infrastructure permits
4. 🔄 Mining licence granted

Project financing 🔄

The DFS outlaid a CAPEX of A$260M. We want to see IVR make progress on debt/equity financing while the silver price is supportive.

Now that the DFS has been published, the next major catalyst for IVR will be project financing.

While permitting is progressing, we want to see IVR make progress on debt/equity financing commitments for the remaining project CAPEX required from the full A$260M in the study.

1. 🔄 Lender engagement and technical due diligence
2. 🔲 Financing commitments

Grade control drilling 🔄

We want to see IVR complete infill drilling at its resource and upgrade the resource in terms of classification.

Drilling on regional targets 🔄

We also want to see IVR drill out the 15km corridor of targets that sit around its 57M ounce JORC resource estimate.

The ultimate success from these drill programs would be a discovery similar to IVR’s existing resource.

Here are the milestones we are tracking:

• ✅ Geophysics/Geochemistry work
• ✅ Identify drill targets
• ✅ Drilling starts
• 🔄 Drilling results