Ora Banda Mining has landed on a final resource estimate of 30,000 ounces of contained gold in the open pit section of its Callion gold deposit in WA’s Goldfields, up 114 per cent on previous estimates and now with a higher grade of 3.5g/t. The company is now working on a design to take the existing open hit from 40m down to a depth of 85m.
The open pit resource at Callion is independent of the resources currently being modelling for the underground deposit that also has historical workings. Both will form part of Ora Banda’s formal definitive feasibility study that is being put together now.
The company is looking hard at the ongoing development program at its Callion deposit after continuing to intersect high-grade gold in drilling at both the open pit and underground areas. The company is proposing a development program to access high-grade ore within the upper levels of the historic underground mine in addition to the extraction of high-grade lodes at depth.
Whilst the company’s focus has been the rejuvenation of the underground workings, the new estimate for the open pit will no doubt give management some additional comfort that it can now work on accessing some early cash flows from the open pit whilst the underground workings are opened up in parallel.
Ora Banda is part of a growing wave of savvy ASX-listed explorers that are seeking to extend historic mothballed brownfields locations into new mines rather than taking the expensive greenfields discovery route.
The Callion deposit lies within Ora Banda’s Davyhurst project that is located only 14km South West of the Davyhurst mill, within the Eastern Goldfields of Western Australia. The project has six prospects however Callion is being fast-tracked given its relatively short distance to the mill.
Management said the upgraded Callion open pit mineral resource estimate of 269,000 tonnes at 3.5g/t gold for 30,000 ounces includes an indicated resource of 241,000 tonnes at a healthy 3.7g/t for 28,700 ounces of contained gold.
The updated estimate was arrived at following the recent additional drilling and it is based on a gold price of A$2,400 per ounce, a lower block cut-off grade of 0.5 g/t gold within an optimum open pit shell that extends to a depth of 85 metres.
Ora Banda Managing Director, David Quinlivan said: “We were initially drawn to Callion due to its relatively high grades and impressive production history. The Callion Mineral Resource is the final resource to be evaluated as part of the Company’s reserve definition program for the Definitive Feasibility Study (DFS) and delivery of this study remains on schedule.”
The latest in-fill drilling campaign as produced some outstanding, high-grade intercepts that should give Ora Banda confidence to leap into digging out some good dirt sooner rather than later at Callion.
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By Matt Birney
