Artemis Resources remains steadfast with more gold uncovered in wake of share price plunge
Examples of gold dore bars poured from Silica Hills nuggets and quartz/gold specimens.
After yesterday’s beating on the ASX, Artemis Resources (ASX: ARV) has bounced back with more gold discoveries at its Silica Hills project in the Western Australian Pilbara region.
Located 12km north of the renowned Purdy’s Reward deposit, the Silica Hills deposit has given up a further 115 ounces of gold (3.6kg) since Artemis reported a discovery in late September.
“The quartz vein stock work and coarse nuggetty gold continues towards the east as predicted,” Artemis executive chairman David Lenigas said.
Artemis has been exploring at Silica Hills for nine months and Mr Lenigas said the activity had bolstered the company’s confidence in the project’s prospectivity and the additional knowledge has helped the company design the best future exploration strategies.
Mr Lenigas said the company was continuing its current work program at the project and was preparing for an “aggressive” drilling program.
Additionally, the Western Australian Government’s Department of Mines, Industry, Regulation and Safety has granted permits allowing Artemis to carry out test trenches and pits to the project’s north.
“A request for an expanded heritage survey with Ngarluma Aboriginal Corporation over the Silica Hills Mining Licences and surrounding areas has been requested,” Mr Lenigas added.
Today’s news follows yesterday’s announcement revealing Artemis has kicked off its plant upgrade at Radio Hill, which will include a 500,000 tonne per annum integrated gravity gold circuit for processing ore from the company’s gold projects in the region. This is in addition to 500,000tpa processing capacity to treat nearby nickel, cobalt, copper and gold ore.
“We also plan to immediately relocate our mobile 100 tonne per hour Nickol River gravity gold plant to Radio Hill hence allowing us to bulk sample conglomerate gold for grade verification purposes, prior to the main plant being ready,” Mr Lenigas advised.
Pilbara gold stocks plunge on disappointment
Gold stocks in the Pilbara region, including Artemis, took a thrashing yesterday after Artemis and its Purdy’s Reward joint venture partner Novo Resources (TSXV: NVO) reported the more expensive bulk trenching exploration method was the “best practical means of evaluating grade and potential viability of the deposit”.
For the past few months, Novo and other stocks had been advocating a theory that the coarse, watermelon seed-shaped nuggets uncovered at numerous spots throughout the region were similar to the world’s largest known gold deposit in South Africa.
However, yesterday’s announcement reveals the mineralisation may not be as similar or as easy to exploit as originally thought.