Verity Resources (ASX: VRL) has commenced a 56-hole, approximately 2,800-metre aircore (AC) drilling campaign across five priority targets at its Monument gold project in Western Australia.
The campaign will test extensions along strike of the main Perseverance, A1, A4, Korong Syenite, and Cooper Well mineralised trends with a view to expanding the project’s 405 square kilometre footprint.
It will effectively test an undrilled strike along the 20km mineralised banded iron formation (BIF) corridor that hosts the 138,000 ounce global mineral resource at Monument’s Korong and Waihi deposits.
Located approximately 6km north-west of the Korong deposit, Perseverance is defined by a strong outcropping BIF horizon that returned a peak historical rock-chip grade of 21.5 grams per tonne gold over 1.4 km of strike, while subsequent lag-soil sampling approximately 150m east of the BIF outcrop returned a peak 4,920 parts per billion gold.
Extensive Drilling
Drilling of three reverse circulation (RC) holes at Perseverance earlier this year returned 2m at 1.24g/t gold from 86m and 2m at 0.73g/t gold from 66m in BIF, confirming the targeted host stratigraphy.
A1 sits along strike to the north-west of Korong, with drilling of four RC holes for 300m in late 2025 returning 2.9m at 2.51g/t gold from 8m and 1.9m at 1.29g/t gold from 8m in the BIF.
Historical rock chip sampling along the BIF outcrop returned 4.48g/t gold, anchoring the southern end of the 9km mineralised corridor that extends north to Perseverance.
Past rock chip sampling of the BIF outcrop at the A4 target that sits midway between A1 and Perseverance returned grades of approximately 1g/t gold.
Significant historic workings at Cooper Well (along strike from Genesis Minerals (ASX: GMD) 34,000-ounce McKenzie Well deposit) are yet to be drill tested.
Fractionated Gold System
The intrusive Korong Syenite body located approximately 1.5km east of the deposit has previously been classified as part of a fractionated suite analogous to district-scale gold-fertile syenite systems including the 7Moz Wallaby discovery owned by Gold Fields, the 1.5Moz Jupiter deposit (owned by Genesis), and the 7Moz Hemi deposit (owned by Northern Star Resources, ASX: NST).
A 26-hole Phase 1 aircore drilling campaign in 2021 returned 4m at 1.38g/t gold from surface, with end-of-hole multi-element geochemistry confirming a fractionated signature consistent with the analogue suite.
Verity director Patrick Volpe said the new AC campaign would focus on progression to mine and discovery of more ounces.
“This program is designed to shallow drill test across 9km of mineralised BIF corridor outside the existing resource at Korong and Waihi, and we are now exploring further targets that have never been systematically tested,” he said.
“Combined with drilling at the Korong Syenite intrusive, […] this campaign aims to prove the potential for further resource ounce growth at Monument.”
