About
The old reports were right there. Someone had to read them.
Lepro started with one prospector's archive of open-file gold reports from the West Coast: hundreds of scanned pages of 1920s and 1930s drill logs, valued in pence per cubic yard, that pointed at ground nobody holds today.
What we do
Lepro maps New Zealand's historic, current and proposed mining activity, starting with gold on the South Island, and finds the ground others have overlooked: strong historic work and mineralisation, little or no current tenure.
It does that by reading. Each open-file report is transcribed page by page and checked by a second, independent read. Drill holes, samples and workings come out with their values converted to modern units and a verbatim quote. They are placed on the map with today's permits, the land you cannot touch, the geology, and what the newspapers of the 1860s to 1920s said about the same creeks.
A gold model then scores the ground, and every target comes with a brief: the evidence, the land position, the permit you would need, the first step in the field and what could be wrong.
How we work
Five rules we hold ourselves to
- 1
Cite every number
Every value in a brief links to the report and page it came from. If we cannot cite it, it does not go in.
- 2
Say what is not known
Confidence labels, located-how tags and caveats are part of the product. Ground whose reports have not been read is scored as unknown, not as empty.
- 3
Targets, not resources
Historic values are historic. We call them report values and targets, never resources or proven ground, and we do not sign Public Reports.
- 4
Credit the sources
The public data belongs to the public and the reports to their authors. We sell our analysis, credit every source, and link back.Data and sources
- 5
Respect the land and the people on it
Briefs never treat Schedule 4 or closed land as available, always name the access arrangements, consents and heritage authority needed, and never invite anyone onto land without consent. Reports for iwi and Māori land trusts are offered in partnership, not as intelligence about their land for others.
What's next
Read more of the archive, then measure ourselves.
- Transcribe the Otago, Southland and Nelson reports so that every district is ranked on its own evidence.
- Back-test the ranking against later permits and discoveries, and publish the hit rate.
- A reviewed tier, where a contracted New Zealand geologist checks and co-signs a desk study.
- Other minerals and, later, the Australian states.
Working on ground in the South Island?
We are looking for prospectors, explorers, consultants, landowners and iwi to pilot Lepro with. Tell us what you are working on.