It hasn’t taken long for Spectrum Metals to hit paydirt at its new Penny West gold project in WA, with the maiden RC drilling program at Penny North intersecting an exceptional 14 metre intercept grading 14.4g/t gold and 4.11g/t silver from 124m down-hole, that included 8m @ 23.3g/t gold and 6.9g/t silver from 128m.
More importantly, the thickened ore zone is 40 metres down-dip from a historical hole that returned a narrow, but anomalous metre interval at 6.47g/t gold.
The new intersection is open in all directions and crucially, has similar geological characteristics to the Penny West high-grade ore lode mined from an open pit to the south, inferring it may be part of the same mineralised system.
Penny West produced 85,000 ounces of gold from 121,000 tonnes grading 21.8g/t gold during 1991 and 1992 and so the new result will have pulses racing in Spectrum’s boardroom.
Managing Director Paul Adams said: “This intersection, in the first hole submitted for analysis in our maiden program at Penny West, has exceeded our highest expectations at this location, both in terms of tenor and width.”
“The fact that the mineralisation style and grade is essentially the same as was mined previously gives us confidence that the newly discovered zone is contemporaneous with the original high-grade mineralisation that made Penny West such a famous name in WA mining history”.
Based on the impressive assay results, Spectrum will immediately expand its present drilling program at Penny North to follow up the significant wide intercept.
The touted 4,500 metre maiden drill campaign is aimed at defining and extending the mineralised envelope below the Penny West open pit, but the discovery to the north will now give the company cause to rethink its short-term drilling strategy.
As so often happens at abandoned mining operations in the WA Goldfields, some lateral thinking has turned up an unexpected discovery and with the gold price nearly quadrupling since the early 1990s, the new results could not have come at a better time for the company.
The current JORC compliant mineral resource estimate of 230,000 tonnes grading 4.8g/t gold for 36,000 ounces, sits below the existing open pit shell, with nearly 78% of the gold contained within the confident “indicated” resource category.
According to Spectrum, the gold historically produced from Penny West was free-milling in nature, with exceptional metallurgical recoveries of about 95%.
With that in mind, the new extension to the north looks very promising for the company as it starts to build critical mass and consider re-starting mining operations at Penny West, which already sits on a granted mining lease.
The Penny West gold project is located just 30km from the mothballed Youanmi operation in the under-explored Murchison mining district of Western Australia.
Spectrum Metals also recently unearthed multiple, high priority drilling targets from an auger geochemical sampling program at Penny West, with the priority targets grouping around the Columbia-Magenta prospect, about 2km north of the open pit area.
These areas will also be drilled with exploratory drill holes during the current campaign on-site.
