West Australian gold exploration and development company Rox Resources, which has a majority stake in the historical high-grade Youanmi gold project, sparked market interest last week with an outstanding drill hole just south of the project’s main lode and existing main open pit.
Rox (ASX: RXL) is in the middle of a 23,000m multi-rig resource definition and exploration drill campaign at Youanmi, which is near Mt Magnet, approximately 480km north-east of Perth.
At the commencement of the program, Rox said resource definition drilling was focused on the conversion of resources from inferred to indicated classification to upgrade the current Youanmi project resource.
Drilling is targeting the near-mine Midway discovery, the Youanmi South prospect – which also sits close to the historic operations – and several other underexplored regional targets.
The initial results announced by Rox on February 13, from Midway, were promising with drill intersections including:
- 6.76m @ 15.40g/t Au
- 3.73m @ 10.25 g/t Au
- 2.86m @ 22.03 g/t Au.
The Midway structure has an interpreted strike length in excess of 1,000m, of which only 100m of strike length has been drill tested to date.
Those results were just a precursor to the March 2 announcement, which detailed the first hole drilled at the Youanmi South structure. RXRC458, the first drill hole at Youanmi South, showed a bonanza intercept of 28m @ 34.81g/t Au.
Rox, though clearly delighted with the Youanmi South result, was cautiously optimistic. It said that as it was the first hole, the company was yet to fully understand the size and potential of the mineralisation.
The Rox share price spiked as would be expected, with the stock jumping to 24.5c compared with 14.5c just before the drill hole was announced.
Rox shares closed at 23.5c last night.
Follow-up drilling is planned to identify the dip of mineralisation of the structure and assess the extent of mineralisation along strike. At this stage the mineralised structure remains open in all directions.
Further results will be released as drilling continues and, under the guidance of recently appointed managing director Robert Ryan, Rox will feed this information into its models with the aim to produce a resource update for Youanmi around mid-year.
The company is excited about the potential for both Midway and Youanmi South to add to existing ounces at Youanmi and allow for a larger-scale project to the one envisaged in last year’s scoping study.
The scoping study outlined a gold production target of approximately 71,000oz per year with an average gold head grade of 5g/t Au for a total gold production target of about 569,000oz over an eight-year life of mine.
Only 20 per cent of the Youanmi mineral project-wide resource of 27.9Mt at 3.57g/t Au for 3.2Moz Au was included in the mining production target, with the success at Midway and Youanmi South hinting at more positive news to come.
