Alma Metals (ASX:ALM) doubles drilling capacity at Briggs with a 16-person camp buy

A second rig, an on-site technical team and a shorter path to the Pre-Feasibility Study finish line

Alma Metals (ASX:ALM) has quietly done something more interesting than a typical mid-programme update. The company has bought a 16-person exploration camp, trucked it up from South Australia, and is bolting it into place at its Briggs Copper Project in central Queensland. Camp commissioning is expected in August.

The key point is not the camp itself. It is what the camp unlocks. With proper accommodation on site, Alma can now run a second drill rig and keep its technical and management teams in the field rather than shuttling them in and out.

For a small copper developer trying to expand a 2 million tonne contained copper resource and push into a Pre-Feasibility Study, that is a genuine operational step change. Managing Director Dr Frazer Tabeart framed it as building the platform to match the scale of the opportunity at Briggs.

The infill drilling programme is progressing in parallel. Around 1,600 metres has been drilled since late April across four holes, all of which have hit copper mineralisation in line with pre-drill expectations. Assays from the first three holes are at the Brisbane lab and are expected in four to five weeks.

Why owning the camp changes the drilling economics

Fly-in fly-out arrangements without on-site accommodation are expensive, slow and hard on personnel. Rig utilisation suffers, technical decisions get delayed, and every logistics hiccup costs days.

By owning a permanent camp with ensuite rooms and a proper kitchen, Alma removes those friction points. A second rig can now be justified because the crews have somewhere to sleep, and geologists can log core the same day it is pulled from the ground.

We think the more interesting angle is cost per metre drilled. Doubling rig count without doubling overhead is the sort of operating leverage that meaningfully shortens the runway on the $4 million placement funding this campaign.

The PFS timeline just got shorter and cheaper

Alma committed to a Pre-Feasibility Study after its Scoping Study came back sufficiently encouraging late in 2025. A PFS at a porphyry copper deposit needs a lot of drilling to firm up resource categories and support metallurgical, geotechnical and hydrogeological work.

With two rigs turning and a permanent on-site presence, the company is telling the market it can hit those PFS drilling requirements sooner and at a lower cost than the original single-rig plan. That matters because time between studies is where junior explorers usually burn cash without generating news.

It is also worth flagging how strong the Briggs setup already is on infrastructure. Gladstone port is 60 kilometres away, and the project sits near high-voltage power lines, rail, gas pipelines and the Dawson Highway. Those factors are what made the Scoping Study viable at Briggs’ low grades.

The risks that do not go away with a new camp

Briggs is a large, low-grade porphyry. That geology can work economically at scale, but it is entirely dependent on getting the strip ratio, recoveries and concentrate quality right. Metallurgical test work has been supportive so far, with 95% copper recovery reported into 23% to 29% grade concentrates at coarse grind sizes.

The assays landing in the next four to five weeks are the near-term test. If grades and widths continue to match pre-drill expectations, the resource growth narrative holds. If they surprise to the downside, the second rig becomes an expense rather than an accelerator.

There is also the joint venture structure to keep in mind. Alma is at 51% and is earning to 70%, after which both parties fund pro rata or dilute. That eventually means Alma carries a bigger share of PFS spend.

The Investors Takeaway for Alma Metals

The camp acquisition is small in dollar terms but strategically neat. It converts a funded drilling programme into a faster drilling programme, and it signals that management is thinking about operational efficiency rather than just news flow. That is the right mindset for a project heading toward PFS.

The catalysts to watch over the second half of 2026 are the first assay batch in early August, the commissioning of the camp and second rig, and follow-up drill results that either extend or lift the current 2 million tonne contained copper resource. Investors looking for broader context on ASX-listed copper developers can find more coverage at stocksdownunder.

In our view, the setup here is straightforward. Drill results deliver, or they do not. Everything else the company has done, from the placement to the camp, is designed to make sure the drilling gets a fair chance to speak.