Rex in 'spectacular' mining find

A BALLARAT-based mineral exploration company has made a "spectacular" find in South Australia.Rex Minerals announced last week it had discovered copper, gold and uranium at its Hillside project on South Australia's Yorke Peninsula.The drilling completed by the company has shown the project has characteristics typical of an iron oxide copper gold deposit like South Australia's Olympic Dam mine.The site is in cropping country near the town of Ardrossan, more than 200km from Adelaide. And while the company has described the find as just a stepping stone to a major discovery, it still represents a major milestone. "It was quite a spectacular intersection and does indicate we're on the right track towards making a very big discovery," said Rex Minerals director Steve Olsen. "We still think that this is more of an indication that there's something even larger nearby."The next step would be to find the highest concentration of copper in the area, he said."The step after that is to find the size of the resource we have available to lead to the development of a new mining project."News of the results last week sent the company's share price surging upwards. It climbed from a price of 13c to a high of 75c within two days after the announcement, before settling to 45c late yesterday. The find has come at a good time for the company, with the global credit crisis and cooling of Australia's mining boom having hit the exploration sector hard."We've been very fortunate. There's a lot of junior explorers out there (with) something like 700 similar to ours." Another Ballarat company, Titeline Drilling, did the drilling work on the project.Rex Minerals was floated on the share market in September 2007.