Gold has a special allure. Its colour, rarity, value and physical properties make it something that people like to find and hold. Historically prospectors would go panning for gold in rivers or loaming the desert soil seeking specs of the yellow metal.

These methods worked well where the gold ore was rich and close to the earth's surface. Today these easy to detect gold deposits have mostly been discovered and these methods have long been abandoned for more fit-for-purpose, systematic and sensitive geochemical prospecting techniques.

Present-day techniques for gold exploration are quite labour intensive and costly, involving many steps from sample collection through to a decision to mine. Professional explorers working in the gold industry today routinely collect samples and send them to a lab for analysis. These samples are then sorted and analysed for gold down to parts per billion level or PPB. The results are then sent back to the geologist for interpretation and follow-up. Using traditional work flows the total process from sample collection to lab assay receipt can exceed 4 months. 

Nimble and adaptive are rarely terms associated with modern exploration. Until now. 

Portable PPB is changing the way gold exploration is approached altogether. Their revolutionary product, DetectORE™ is a process, consumable and software app. The device enables geologists to undertake ‘real-time’ gold analysis in the field, delivering substantial savings in time, expenditures and resources leading to greatly accelerated mineral exploration. 

DetectORE™ for the first time enables conventional handheld XRF instruments to detect gold at parts per billion levels with high degree of precision. This is considered by some to be the holy grail for gold exploration.

DetectORE™ is patented technology invented by Dr. Mel Lintern while working at CSIRO. Whilst with CSIRO testing of DetectORE was conducted on approximately 500 samples before being licensed to Portable PPB to continue the R&D and eventually commercialise. In the two years since taking the technology out of the CSIRO, Portable PPB has received global industry support and several State and Commonwealth funding grants. As a result, Portable PPB has been able to set up a dedicated research facility, employ staff and further test, refine and advance the process with over 15,000 more tests and experiments conducted drawing on samples from around the world. 

DetectORE™ enables modern geologists to be like the prospectors of the great Gold Rush eras, working across the terrain, testing for gold, reacting to the results and exploring for as long as their supplies last. With DetectORE™, multiple phases of geochemical exploration can be completed in a single field trip. The technology compresses the time for discoveries making it considerably more efficient and cost-effective to explore remote regions. DetectORE™ makes exploring for gold smarter and discovery faster.