Morning News Bites for October 8
High Grade Hits at Bellevue.
Bellevue Gold (BGL) has reported that it has discovered a new shallow high-grade shoot at its Bellevue Gold Project in Western Australia.
Bellevue Managing Director Steve Parsons said: “The drilling results on the new Armand lode are outstanding, with high-grade mineralisation intersected near existing development hosted within the Bellevue Shear.
With mineralisation outlined over 450m and remaining open along strike and down dip, Bellevue will press ahead with drilling with a view to including Armand in the next resource upgrade.
The company has also hit some high-grade results close and east of their Deacon lode. This was discovered when drilling a new location, which was partially financed by the Exploration Incentive Scheme
Bellevue has been aggressive in its drilling campaign while still maintaining the project development.
Mr Parsons said: “We have earmarked $35 million for exploration spending on a full program of drilling and project development work over the next 15 months.
“This substantial investment is central to our dual-track strategy of driving growth in our inventory through aggressive exploration and resource drilling while also advancing the project towards development and cashflow.
“These parallel work streams will maximise our ability to continue creating value for shareholders in both the short and long term.”
Grades included: 6.1m @ 14.5g/t and 3.7m @ 26.2g/t
Dreadnought Announces Encouraging Drill Results.
Dreadnought Resources Limited (DRE) has announced further results from the 17-hole (1,767m) RC drill program at Metzke’s Find, part of the Illaara Gold-VMS-Iron Ore Project. The latest drill program tested extensions of lode mineralisation at depth and along strike confirming mineralisation along ~280m of strike and to a vertical depth of ~100m.
Dreadnought Managing Director, Dean Tuck, in a statement said: “Metzke’s Find continues to deliver high-grade intercepts while we steadily increase our understanding of the system. Identifying the flat lying offset now indicates that the first five drill holes drilled to the north probably ended short. This learning is significant and reopens ~80m of potential mineralised strike. We look forward to redrilling the main structure to the north as well as diamond drilling to further advance our structural understanding of the mineralised lodes. Furthermore, results from Longmore’s Find and Black Oak should be released in mid-October 2020.”
Illaara is located 190km northwest of Kalgoorlie in the Yilgarn Craton and covers 75kms of strike along the Illaara Greenstone Belt. The land was previously under the control of Newmont and until Dreadnought took over the lease, had very little exploration carried out. The land was previously earmarked for iron ore exploration, but Dreadnought has focused on the gold potential in the area.
Yandal Releases Further High-Grade Results.
Yandal Resources (YRL) released further results from its current drilling program that shows high-grade gold mineralisation at shallow depths in their Gordons Dam prospect. 36 holes from the RC drill program are still pending and the company is keen to include them in their maiden resource estimate.
A further 10,500 metres of air-core and diamond drilling is expected to be completed in the December quarter.
When releasing the latest results Managing Director Mr Lorry Hughes said: “The potential to define an initial shallow Mineral Resource and subsequent open pit development is becoming clearer as infilling wide-spaced reconnaissance holes with high quality RC holes is proving successful. Very high grades can be a common feature of palaeochannel hosted deposits in the region and they are quite often located close to a primary source or structure.
High grades have been intersected beneath parts of the palaeochannel previously and the exploration plan is to continue to explore for deeper extensions utilising geological and structural observations from the pending diamond core drilling.
In the meantime shallow Air-core drilling will continue to explore for new palaeochannel and bedrock hosted gold trends in order to provide new targets for RC testing”.
Some of the results included: 1m @ 73.12g/t Au within 8m @ 11.03g/t Au from 36m and 1m @ 15.13g/t Au within 7m @ 3.48g/t Au from 38m.
Wiluna (WMX) Updates Sulphide Development
Wiluna Mining is advancing its $58m stage-one sulphide expansion project at its Wiluna gold mine, which it said will increase production from circa 60,000 ounces of gold a year to 250k ounces a year by late 2023 when the stage 2 expansion is completed.
In a statement to the ASX the company said that at its last board meeting it was approved the concentrator construction works to be completed by GR Engineering Services. Construction is planned to start in March next year according to the company’s timetable with commissioning commencing in October.
Milan Jerkovic, Wiluna Mining’s Executive Chair commented: “I’m pleased to report that significant progress has occurred surrounding the sulphide development plan. A significant hurdle was met when the Board of Directors approved the construction of the concentrator and the appointment of GR Engineering to undertake the EPC contract for construction. The timetable is confirmed and the capital requirements for Stage 1 will be fully funded with the expected draw down of the Mercuria second tranche debt facility and work will commence immediately with commissioning planned for September 2021.
The challenge now is to deliver on Stage 1 and scope out the optimum size for Stage 2 given the considerable size of the Wiluna orebody. This will take shape in the Feasibility Study which is currently being undertaken. We are now exactly halfway through our 24 months strategy to turn the Company around, deliver real value to our shareholders and maximise the true potential of the Wiluna Mining Complex. We are delivering on our promises and we plan to execute with precision. The sheer size of Wiluna, which is now the 7th largest gold district under single ownership in Australia, based on JORC Mineral Resources, throws up challenges but nothing worthwhile comes easy and we believe the prize for shareholders of developing this project in a systematic, thorough and staged manner to become a Tier 1 asset in a Tier 1 jurisdiction will be worth it”.
Granny Smith Mine Powered by Renewables.
Continuing its push with renewable energy after its Agnew mine became the first in Australia to be powered with wind-generated electricity, operating a 56MW renewable energy grid, Gold Fields has built a solar system to help power capacity at its Granny Smith operations.
The system has 20,000 solar panels attached to a 2megawatt – 1megawatt battery system to store the energy produced by the panels. It is expected the solar array will help reduce fuel consumption on the site by more than 10%.
Gold Fields Executive Vice-President Australasia Stuart Mathews is quoted as saying: “Here in Australia and globally our company is committed to addressing climate change impacts by transitioning towards an energy mix that increasingly embraces renewables and lower carbon fuel sources,” Mathews said.
“The Granny Smith microgrid and the renewable energy solution at our Agnew mine are a clear demonstration of the innovative steps we are taking to ensure the ongoing sustainability of our operations.”
The system was installed by Aggreko and becomes part of the self-contained system on site.