WA-focussed gold developer Classic Minerals has launched a 3000m drilling program at its Kat Gap project as it looks to follow up on high-grade shallow mineralisation struck in ongoing infill work.
The 20-hole campaign will follow up a suite of notable near-surface strikes, including 3m at 13.23 grams per tonne gold from 32m.
Other notable intercepts from the infill work include 5m at 7.36g/t gold from 42m, 3m grading 7.04g/t gold from 43m and 2m running 21.07g/t gold from a depth of just 33m.
Classic says the deep drilling program aims to evaluate down plunge gold extensions of an undrilled area adjacent to the near-surface hits. Assay results from the RC campaign are expected to start trickling in over the next few weeks.
The company believes if the in-progress deep campaign leads to a discovery, it could add significant ounces to its burgeoning roster and Classic says it could potentially funnel the data into the design of a larger open pit mine at the site.
The current resource at Kat Gap is 975,722 tonnes grading at a healthy 2.96 g/t gold for almost 93,000 ounces. The deposit is one of three assets the company has on its books, including the Lady Alda and Lady Magdalene deposits, that contribute 59,700 and 251,350 ounces of gold, respectively.
Notably, the Kat Gap deposit is the highest-grade contributor to the company’s total gold inventory of 403,906 ounces.
The flagship Kat Gap project takes in a near-surface unmined gold deposit about 170 kilometres from Southern Cross in WA.
The zone’s prospectivity was first underlined in the late 1900s and was subsequently the focus of a scoping study by former proprietor Sons of Gwalia in 2003.
The study was aimed at identifying resources that could be economically trucked to the company’s treatment plant about 150km from Kat Gap.
According to Classic, the distance, coupled with a gold price at the time of just $800 per ounce, conspired to put a damper on Sons of Gwalia’s production ambitions.
Management argues that the legacy scoping study's only included resources above a shallow depth of 50m and failed to reflect Kat Gap’s true potential. Accordingly, the new owner has been working on a new pit design that factors in the tenure’s potentially deeper lying mineralisation in addition to in the current gold price of $2600.
Classic says the activity could lead to delivering a much larger in-pit resource.
In addition to the rolling RC and infill programs, the company has also kicked off a three-hole diamond drilling program at Kat Gap to optimise the angles of the potential open pit mine.
The geotechnical probe will see the developer plunge holes to a depth of about 330m and follows a handful of bores completed earlier this year.
Classic aims to use data from both programs to round out design work for a potential open-pit mine.
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By Matt Birney
