West Australian gold explorer Focus Minerals (ASX: FML) is pleased to announce a significant Mineral Resource upgrade for the CNX deposit, at the Coolgardie Gold Project.
HIGHLIGHTS
CNX’s open pit Mineral Resource increased by 30% as a result of twin, infill and geotechnical drilling.
66% conversion of the December 2020 CNX Mineral Resource to Indicated status following June 2021 Quarter drilling programs.
Drilling confirmed average mineralisation width of 35m over 700m strike, highlighting CNX’s bulk mining potential.
Additional resource development drilling underway.
400m CNX-style mineralisation confirmed at nearby Green Light target.
The 30% increase in CNX’s Mineral Resource was achieved on the back of successful drilling campaigns, which also highlighted that this shallow gold deposit remains open at depth and along strike. Focus is planning another drilling program targeting a resource extension.
The Coolgardie Gold Project (Coolgardie) covers 175km2 of highly prospective tenements on the outskirts of the Coolgardie township in the Goldfields region. An updated Pre-Feasibility Study (PFS) delivered a NPV7.5% of $183 million (see ASX announcement dated 22 September 2020), prior to the latest mineral resource success at CNX.
CNX is immediately north-west along strike to the Three Mile Hill open-cut mine and close to the Three Mile Hill processing plant (in care and maintenance). The mineralisation sub-crops over a drill-defined strike of 700m. The updated CNX open pit Mineral Resource is reported on a dry tonnage basis using a 0.7 g/t Au cut-off to 290mRL and a southern strike extent cut-off of 6,577,490mN (MGA94, Zone 51).
Commenting on the CNX Mineral Resource update, Focus Minerals’ CEO, Mr Zhaoya Wang, said:
“The growing bulk-style CNX deposit is ideally located to supply our Three Mile Hill plant, which will be the centrepiece of a proposed restart of gold mining operations at Coolgardie. It is likely that the fastexpanding CNX deposit will be the primary source of open-pit mill feed in the initial years of a resumption of mining. Further resource additions at CNX and at the highly exciting Green Light target will strongly enhance our mining plans at Coolgardie.”
