ASX-listed aspiring gold developer Horizon Minerals has returned a swag of encouraging drill intersections of between one and three grams per tonne gold from a first-pass reverse circulation program at its flagship Boorara project near Kalgoorlie in WA. The drilling vectored in on several prospects lining a 10km corridor that takes in the Perth-based company’s centrepiece 448,240-ounce Boorara deposit and smaller 30,720-ounce Golden Ridge deposit.
Horizon punched out 25 RC holes for an aggregate drilling coverage of 2,833m to a maximum depth of 234m, testing the “greater Boorara” project area that it refers to as the “Boorara to Golden Ridge” corridor following a contour adjacent to the auriferous Boorara shear.
The latest round of drilling along greater Boorara relates to a planned 13,000m of near-mine and surrounds drilling, which in turn is one of a myriad of programs in the company’s massive 50,000m drilling push in calendar 2021.
Horizon says the drilling campaign is focused on high-priority advanced resource definition targets and new discoveries across its ground-holdings in the Kalgoorlie region that span about 1,100 square kilometres.
According to the company, significant gold mineralisation was encountered outside the current resource envelopes at Golden Ridge.
Some of the higher-grade hits include 5m going 3.15 g/t from 142m, 1m at 3.16 g/t from 25m, 1m at 3.07 g/t from 18m and 2m at 2.36 g/t from 61m.
Others include 4m at 2.01 g/t from 66m, 26m at 1.12 g/t from 130m and 12m at 1.11 g/t from 128m.
Horizon says its drilling confirms that Golden Ridge’s porphyry host rock contains multiple, narrow flat lodes of quartz veining, with the thicker intercepts in pre-collar holes of particular interest.
Open-cut mining at Golden Ridge between 1998 and 2004 generated 1.78 million tonnes of ore at 1.98 g/t culminating in the production of 113,520 ounces of gold.
At the Boorara end of the corridor, the Beehive prospect yielded better assays of 1m at 3.55 g/t from 55m, 1m at 3.25 g/t from 14m, 1m at 3.11 g/t from 31m, 2m at 2.4 g/t from 118m and 1m at 2.06 g/t from 70m.
The company says the newly identified 2.5km-long corridor encompassing Beehive has seen little modern exploration and now firms up as another new priority area.
Horizon now has follow-up drilling in the wings at greater Boorara.
Horizon Minerals Managing Director Jon Price said: “These latest drilling results continue to demonstrate the prospectivity within the greater Boorara project area in close proximity to the large-scale Boorara deposit and the proposed mill site. With over 20km of strike to be tested beyond the current Boorara resource, we see significant potential for near-mine extensions and new discoveries in this mineral rich geological setting.”
Horizon recently tabled an updated open-pittable measured, indicated and inferred resource statement for the main Boorara deposit that weighed in at 11.03 million tonnes at an average grade of 1.26 g/t for 448,240 ounces of contained gold.
Boorara accounts for about 44 per cent of Horizon’s combined mineral resource base in the Kalgoorlie Goldfields region that amalgamates Boorara with the resources of about a half a dozen satellite deposits. It is estimated at 19.18 million tonnes grading an average 1.65 g/t for 1.015 million ounces of contained gold.
Management says the aim of its 50,000m of drilling this year is to organically grow its project pipeline within a 75km radius of the proposed Boorara mining and processing operation about 15km east of Kalgoorlie.
In tandem with this work, Horizon continues to evaluate the economic and technical merits of the key satellite resources as part of its well advanced “consolidated” feasibility study on Boorara that contemplates an initial five-to-seven-year production profile.
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