Classic Minerals has again boosted its contained gold ounces at its Forrestania Gold near Southern Cross in WA. The company said this week that the Lada Ada deposit at Forrestania has hiked by 71% and now stands at 1.35 million tonnes grading 1.38 grams per tonne gold for 59,700 ounces.
The latest increase at lady Ada brings the project’s global resource to 7.27 million tonnes grading 1.33g/t for 311,050 ounces of gold.
Lady Ada is an historical open pit mine, located about 120km south of Southern Cross in WA, that produced over 27,000 ounces grading 8.81g/t gold for Sons of Gwalia up until 2003.
Old milling records have proven that Classic’s Forrestania deposits contain a significant component of gravity-recoverable gold and the ore is non-refractory.
A refractory ore has ultra-fine gold particles dispersed throughout its gold “occluded” minerals. Sulphides are impermeable and will thus occlude gold and make it hard for standard leach methods to recover the gold.
Classic has been drilling aggressively at its Forrestaina project for the past three years and has been working diligently on improving the geological model that assists it to drill target the high-grade gold-shoots.
The company has created three-dimensional models of the Lady Ada and Lady Magdalene deposits that essentially combine the quantitative, or assay measurements with tangible geological data. As part of this process, it was noted that higher gold-grades at the deposits formed clusters, particularly when the gold cut off grades were increased.
With the company’s long-held conceptual theory supporting the presence of these high-grade gold pockets, Classic says that further drilling is required to pin down continuations of the more gold-rich areas.
At the Lady Magdalene deposit, Classic says it is onto a high-tonnage, low-grade gold system with further drilling potentially defining the higher-grade gold shoots at both deposits.
The scope to increase the size of Classic’s Forestania resource is supported by drilling slightly further afield, with recent activity just north of the Lady Ada pit potentially defining just the tip of gold-bearing veins that historically projected down into the high-grade sapphire lode at Lady Ada.
Classic is now looking to kick off a scoping study at its Forrestania Gold project soon and it will be interesting to watch one of the Goldfield’s old gems rise from the annals of history to breathe again.
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