E79 Gold Mines gears up to drill high priority targets within one of world’s richest gold belts

E79 Gold Mines (ASX: E79) is the latest gold explorer to hit ASX boards this year, with a suite of tenements in two of the world’s richest gold belts in Western Australia – Laverton and Murchison.

The company joined ASX ranks earlier this month after raising $7 million in its IPO – giving it a market cap of $13 million on listing.

E79 chief executive officer Ned Summerhayes said the company was “excited” to begin advancing the company’s “underexplored” portfolio within “significantly endowed gold provinces”.

“Together with our experienced board, we look forward to creating shareholder value through discovery in the world-class Laverton tectonic zone and Murchison gold fields,” he added.

Highly experienced executive team

Although a newcomer to the ASX, E79’s executive team is well versed in mineral exploration.

Mr Summerhayes has previously worked with other successful explorers and miners including Silver Lake Resources (ASX: SLR), Black Cat Syndicate (ASX: BC8), Leyshon Resources and Kimberly Diamond Co.

The company’s non-executive chairman is Chris Cairns who headed up gold producer Integra Mining before Silver Lake acquired it in 2013.

Mr Cairns is currently executive chairman of Stavely Minerals (ASX: SVY) which is hunting for copper and gold in Victoria.

Joining Mr Cairns on the board is Peter Ironside, who is also a former director of Integra and current non-executive director of Stavely Minerals.

The company’s board comprises highly experienced geologist Deborah Lord, who has worked for many majors including Western Mining Corporation, Placer Dome, SRK Consulting and BHP (ASX: BHP).

Ms Lord is also director of the University of Western Australia’s Centre for Exploration Targeting and chair of VALMIN, which develops and maintains public regulations for reporting technical assessments and mineral asset valuation.

Another Stavely Minerals non-executive director, Amanda Sparks has taken up the company secretary position with E79.

Exploration plans at Laverton South

With 20,000m of aircore drilling due to kick-off at the flagship Laverton South project this week, E79 has already firmed up several new high priority targets following a ground gravity survey.

Mr Summerhayes said the survey “clearly demonstrates” the presence of a greenstone belt within the Lake Yindana sub project.

“This corroborates the historic magnetics data and validates our exploration targeting methodology for what is clearly an exciting new search space in the eastern goldfields.”

He said the previously unrecognised greenstone belt trends for over 25km through the project within the “highly gold endowed” Laverton tectonic zone.

“Encouragingly, intrusion-related features also appear in the gravity, which warrant drill testing,” he added.

Laverton South

The wider Laverton South project lies within the southern portion of the Laverton tectonic zone about 130km from Kalgoorlie.

It comprises two tenement packages – Lake Yindana and Pinjin JV, which combined cover 346 square kilometres.

According to E79, the Laverton tectonic zone is one of the world’s richest gold belts with more than 30 million ounces in historical production.

The zone is home to numerous multi-million-ounce gold deposits such as Goldfields’ Granny Smith (3.7Moz) and Wallaby (11.8Moz), as well as AngloGold Ashanti’s (ASX: AGG) Sunrise Dam (10.3Moz).

Previous exploration at the 207sq km Lake Yindana tenement resulted in a historically mapped large granite body.

E79 believes it houses a previously unrecognised greenstone sequence that is “highly prospective for gold”.

In addition to Lake Yindana, E79 is earning into St Barbara’s (ASX: SBM) Pinjin asset, which encompasses 139sq km.

St Barbara has already generated and ranked targets with several designated at “walk-up”.

Two of these targets will be tested in the initial drilling program.

Jungar Flats

Over in WA’s Murchison lies E79’s Jungar Flats project, which is 70km west of Meekatharra and 45km from the 2.8Moz Big Bell gold deposit.

Jungar Flats encompasses 336sq km and hosts 30km of prospective strike.

Similar to the Laverton tectonic zone, the Murchison region has a gold endowment exceeding 30Moz.