Arika Resources unearths major potential at Yundamindra gold project in WA

A combination of historical information and recent drilling success has helped Arika Resources (ASX: ARI) identify significant upside at its Yundamindra gold project in Western Australia.

Arika is finalising plans to recommence drilling next week at the project, located 65 kilometres south-west of Laverton in WA’s Eastern Goldfields mining district.

This program will test extensions of prospects along strike and at depth while the company is undertaking a review and synthesis of all geoscientific datasets collected over Yundamindra.

Testing strike and depth

The upcoming Phase 2 drilling at Yundamindra will initially focus on testing strike and depth extensions at the Pennyweight Point and Landed at Last prospects.

Arika’s recently completed drilling programs at Yundamindra – the first in over ten years at the project – identified significant upside at Pennyweight Point and Landed at Last in particular, with the company planning to apply geophysical surveys to provide more precise mapping of faults and shears on a localised scale.

Initial studies have revealed that the vast majority of historical holes, completed in the 1980s and 1990s, were drilled near the surface.

Maiden drilling

“Having completed a highly successful maiden drilling program on three prospects at Yundamindra that delivered outstanding results, we are excited to provide an update on our review and analysis of all historical data and our recent drilling results,” managing director Justin Barton said.

“Analysis shows that approximately 97% of all historical holes were restricted to the weathered zone and drill depths of less than 80m, where drilling was essentially blade refusal targeting shallow high-grade oxide resources.”

“This presents an exciting opportunity for Arika as the mineralisation essentially remains unexplored at depth and along strike, providing a great opportunity for a significant further gold discovery outside of the shallow oxide as we chase the source of the mineralisation in the underlying bedrock and along strike.”

Fresh bedrock

The assessment of previous exploration found that no drilling was undertaken more than 100m into the fresh bedrock at Yundamindra.

“This shows the significant potential upside of this project and the high prospectivity of a significant gold discovery at depth and along strike, in an area that is similarly structurally hosted and within 30km of several multi-million-ounce resources,” Mr Barton said.

Arika’s previous drilling was designed to validate historical results and to test for bedrock-hosted gold mineralisation beneath the shallow historical occurrences.

The company achieved those goals with spectacular drilling results, including the 30m at 3.86 grams per tonne gold reported in late September.

The company is considering additional surveys to further build on those results, including the use of ultra-detailed magnetics, ultra-detailed gravity and sub-audio magnetics.