The well-attended RIU Explorers Conference in Fremantle this week served as the perfect platform for Australia’s next precious metals producer, Gold Road Resources (ASX: GOR), to lead a group of explorers to kick off 2019 exploration programs in WA’s prosperous Goldfields region.
Gold Road, the joint-owner of the soon-to-be completed world-class Gruyere gold project, told delegates at the conference it was targeting 1 million ounce deposits or clusters of deposits across its Yamarna tenements east of Laverton.
The company has allocated about $20 million to fund exploration initiatives at Yamarna this year, with about 115,000 metre of drilling to be undertaken.
That starts with the a 2,600m diamond drill program, a 5,300m reverse cycle drilling program and a 10,000m aircore drilling campaign, all of which will be initiated over the course of the March quarter.
Gold Road’s primary target at Yamarna is its high-grade Gilmore discovery, where it plans to test down-dip and along strike.
Also presenting at RIU this week was NTM Gold (ASX: NTM), which is set to commence diamond drilling activities at its highly prospective Redcliffe gold project in Leonora.
The diamond drilling follows the recent completion of an RC program at Redcliffe and will test the depth extent of the Golden Terrace South, Nambi and Bindy prospects.
Aircore drilling is also expected to begin later next month, targeting greenfield discoveries and areas around several existing prospects.
A new three-pronged exploration strategy launched in the middle of last year had immediate success with the discovery of the Hub prospect, which has already had some initial RC follow-up drilling and will receive further drilling attention this year.
With a sizable drilling program underway, and on the back of exploration success in 2018 which including a significant Redcliffe resource upgrade to 538,000oz, 2019 is shaping up to be another exciting year for NTM as it actively prospects the +80 per cent of Redcliffe that is yet to be effectively explored.
Meanwhile, aspiring nickel miner St George Mining (ASX: SGQ) kicked off its 2019 drilling campaign this week with further drilling at the Mt Alexander project near Leonora.
Mt Alexander is one of Australia’s most exciting and most significant greenfield nickel sulphide exploration projects.
St George said this week the ~5,500m RC drill program focused on 37 nickel-copper sulphide targets and would include infill and extensional drilling at the company’s flagship Investigators discovery, as well as first-ever drilling at the new Fairbridge prospect.
“The 2019 drill campaign at Mt Alexander is off to an exciting start with a range of drill targets that have strong potential to discover further nickel-copper sulphides,” St George chairman John Prineas said.
“The RC drill program will be testing for continuations of the known high-grade mineralisation as well as testing for additional occurrences in areas where there has been no or very little previous drilling.”
Mr Prineas said the first holes to be drilled were at the new West End and Fairbridge targets; areas which are located on the highly mineralised Cathedrals Belt and adjacent to the high-grade discoveries at Investigators, Stricklands and Cathedrals.
The campaign follows a highly successful drilling campaign at Mt Alexander in 2018, which yielded numerous massive nickel-copper sulphide hits at the project’s three high-grade discoveries.
“The strong results from the 2018 drilling continue, with final assays confirming further high-grade nickel-copper-cobalt-PGE’s (platinum-group elements) in multiple intersections,” Mr Prineas said.