Rox Resources (ASX: RXL) told the market today it had appointed existing Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Mr Phillip Wilding as Managing Director and CEO of the Company to reinforce its clear focus on progressing the Youanmi Gold Project towards production.
Mr Wilding is an experienced corporate executive and mining engineer with more than 20 years’ experience. Since commencing as CEO on 14 October 2024, Mr Wilding has overseen a successful $27 million capital raise and share purchase plan as well as completion of an 11,000 metre major drilling program, with a further 35,000 metre extensional drilling program commenced.
Rox’s Chairman, Mr Stephen Dennis welcomed Mr Wilding’s appointment to the board as Managing Director.
“Phill’s enthusiasm and drive to deliver on the multiple workstreams at Youanmi since commencing as CEO in October last year gives the Board great confidence in his ability to deliver sustainable shareholder value,” Mr Dennis said.
Further to Mr Wilding’s appointment, Mr David Boyd was appointed as a Non-Executive Director of Rox. Mr Boyd is a highly experienced geologist with more than 25 years’ experience in the mining industry. He has worked in senior exploration roles with major gold-mining houses including RGC/Goldfields Limited, Placer Dome Asia Pacific, and Barrick Gold Corporation.
Last week, speaking on the sidelines of the 2025 RIU Explorers Conference in Fremantle, Rox Managing Director Phillip Wilding told The Pick Magazine that the attraction to taking on the role four months ago was due in no small part to the quality of the Youanmi project.
“Youanmi is a project I looked at previously through my other roles, in particular the Resource base and the fact there was a really robust PFS that came out,” Mr Wilding said.
Located within proven terrain in WA’s North Eastern Goldfields, Youanmi currently has a Mineral Resource of 16.2 million tonnes at 4.4 grams per tonne for 2.3 million ounces of gold.
“The top 300 metres of the orebody have an OVM greater than 4,000 ounces and it is still 2,000 ounces down near the bottom end – it is purely limited by drilling.
“The PFSs that came out had fantastic financials and it showed the project is going to have a long life and high cash-flow generation.
“For me, I love building operations, my entire background has been building operations and I wanted to do it in a company where I could lead it.”
The location of Youanmi is also highly amenable to building a gold operation, being in an established field with successful, gold producing neighbours.
Rox’s tenement package includes about 62 kilometres of strike along the Youanmi Shear Zone, about 150 kilometres south east of Mt Magnet and about 150 kilometers north east of Payne’s Find.
“There is good infrastructure in place, we have access to air strips, good roads and it is in a good jurisdiction.”
In terms of highlights to date, Mr Wilding said the company needed to do a capital raising, so he took the opportunity to treat it as a recapitalisation.
“We raised $27 million six weeks into my role, with fantastic support from institutions and our major shareholder in Hawke’s Point. Another major shareholder in QGold lifted their position substantially as well.
“Getting that off the ground has really set this company up over the next year to deliver on our DFS and our intention is to release the DFS around October or November.
“In the meantime, with those funds raised it is all about drilling the orebody, so we have a 35,000 metre drilling program ongoing right now focusing on growing the orebody and understanding it a bit more.
“We want to see how big we can make it and make sure we get the mill the right size.”
The other part of the current program for Rox Resources is getting ready for access to commence early works at Youanmi.
“At the moment, civil crews are on site working on our evaporation ponds, while next month we will do the installation of the pumps and pipework, and hopefully we will be moving water in the next six-to-eight weeks.
“That will set us up for later this year to get into that orebody, doing some exploration declines and getting into the FID to start mining.”
