overview
Where Celtic Iron Met Roman Industry
The Noricum Group takes its name from the ancient Celtic-Roman province of Noricum, renowned in antiquity for the exceptional quality of its iron and steel — “Noric steel” was prized throughout the Roman Empire and considered superior to any other iron source in the ancient world.
The three license blocks sit within the Austro-Alpine crystalline basement of the Central Alps, reflecting Paleozoic metamorphic and igneous basement rocks with associated sedimentary cover sequences. This is the same fundamental geological terrane that hosted significant silver, copper, and base metal mineralization exploited since prehistoric times. The blocks span the Inn Valley/Vorarlberg corridor where northwest-trending structural lineaments have focused hydrothermal activity along a metallogenic system that extends across the entire Alpine arc.
Infrastructure
The Noricum Group is well served by the Inn Valley corridor — one of the Alps’ most important transport axes — carrying the Arlberg railway and A12/A14 motorways connecting Innsbruck westward to Vorarlberg and Switzerland. Proximity to Innsbruck provides access to university expertise and regional government services. Cross-border connectivity into Switzerland and Germany offers further logistical advantages for equipment, supply chains, and downstream processing relationships.
mining heritage
From Noric Steel to Habsburg Silver
The Noricum Group encompasses a mining heritage stretching from the Celtic iron forges of the pre-Roman era through to the Habsburg-patronized silver and base metal operations of the medieval and early modern periods. The Montafon valley has a particularly well-documented extraction history. At Landeck, mining at Platzertal was once the highest-altitude mine in Europe, operating between 2,500 and 3,000 meters elevation — a testament to the value of the deposits that justified such extreme working conditions.
These blocks represent the westernmost expression of a metallogenic system that extends across the entire Alpine arc, and they have never been subjected to modern systematic exploration.
What’s Next
All three Noricum Group blocks are in the Historical Data Aggregation stage of the Ekometall Process. Archival records from the Inn Valley and Montafon are being compiled for processing through the GexplOre AI pipeline. The Landeck block, as the largest in the group and with the most detailed historical record, is expected to advance into target generation first.