South Australia extends mineral exploration co-financing initiative

The Government of South Australia announced that it has extended its Accelerated Discovery Initiative (ADI) until 2025, committing another A$11.5 million to the program.

The ADI provides co-financing to mineral exploration activities to attract greater exploration investment and bring forward new mineral resource discoveries.

“We expect to receive a high level of interest during round three, with a funding of up to $3 million reflecting the global significance of ADI and the calibre of proposals,” Dan van Holst Pellekaan, the state’s Minister for Energy and Mining, said in a media statement.

“ADI is Australia’s most diverse exploration co-funding program, offering support for traditional drilling and geophysics, as well as other non-conventional exploration techniques, frontier logistics support, technology and research innovation.” 

Van Holst Pellekaan pointed out that so far, during rounds one and two, funding of $7.4 million was allocated to 36 initiatives. 

He also mentioned that round two was heavily over-subscribed, with a total of 76 applications received and 22 projects assessed against the criteria to receive funding. 

One of those initiatives was that of Barton Gold (ASX: BGD), a company exploring the Gawler Craton area in central South Australia and which obtained compelling results after being able to use deep ground penetrating radar (GPR) techniques, facilitated by ADI.

“The technique has not only found over 25 shallow new structures but also their orientation, giving us clear, shallow targets for precise, high-efficiency and low-cost drill testing,” Barton Gold’s managing director and CEO, Alexander Scanlon, said in the press brief. “We are looking at an order of magnitude gain in cost and time to target delineation, acquiring these targets for less than $200,000 over a 1-2 month period, versus $2-3 million of drilling over a 1-2 year period of time.”

For the Minister, Barton’s recent success is an example of the benefits of the ADI not only delivering results for a single company but also prompting public sharing to help other explorers unlock new discoveries.