Queensland Resources Minister Scott Stewart announced today the state’s fifth consecutive round of funding to support exploration.

The funding, administered through the Collaboration Exploration Initiative (CEI), aims to support Queensland’s resource exploration companies by providing grants to encourage exploration, particularly in frontier and greenfield areas.

Queensland Exploration Council chair Kim Wainwright says she expects competition to be strong, based on the response to previous rounds, and welcomes the latest round of $2.5m in funding for this CEI round.

“The CEI has provided $10 million worth of funding to more than 190 explorers over the past 14 years,” she said.

Ms Wainwright said Queensland’s CEI led to more than 50 significant mineral deposit discoveries in that time in under-explored areas of Queensland, including significant silver, lead and zinc deposits as large as South 32’s Cannington mine.

“Funding received through a previous CEI round also contributed to Australia’s largest discovery of a copper-cobalt resource by Aeon Metals,” she said.

“Another great example is the $200,000 in funding awarded to Red Metal to use magnetotelluric survey equipment to undertake detailed mapping of known zinc, lead and silver deposits in and around the old Century Mine near Lawn Hill.”

Round 5 is currently open for submissions until 21 May 2021. Future funding rounds are scheduled to open April 2022 (round 6) and April 2023 (round 7).

Advertisement