Gold assays hold promise for Cervantes Corp at Albury Heath
Ongoing drilling at Cervantes Corporation’s Albury Heath project near Meekatharra has returned up to 202.79 grams per tonne gold.
Perth-based Cervantes Corporation (ASX: CVS) has released encouraging early results from a drilling campaign at its wholly-owned Albury Heath gold project in Western Australia’s Meekatharra district.
The company reported today that 1,356 samples had so far been received from 2,009 samples collected over 29 holes drilled for 1,866m.
Individual single metre assays from holes drilled into the south-western edge of the resource earlier this year returned high-grade results of 202.79 grams per tonne (or over 6 ounces per tonne), 129.3g/t, 51.75g/t and 31.4g/t of gold.
Best results were 2m at 67.2g/t from 27m, including 1m at 129.3 g/t from 27m; 4m at 9.1g/t from 19m, including 2m at 16.5g/t from 19m; and 2m at 18.2g/t from 4m, including 1m at 31.4g/t from 4m.
The reverse circulation drilling campaign was designed to test the down dip potential of the open lodes at Albury Heath which, based on previous results, are not abating at depth.
Up dip and the potentially-mineralised footwall to the deposit’s historic underground stopes were also tested, as near-surface mineralisation had been insufficiently investigated in earlier drilling.
While the campaign’s early results were “pleasing”, Cervantes must wait until all assays have been returned before determining if the results will impact the project’s current resource.
“Previous drilling activities indicated some of the targets [in this campaign] were devoid of any significant gold grades,” the company stated.
“[This campaign] has possibly extended the resource of those targets; however, until a full analysis is undertaken, there is no basis to determine if such an outcome will occur,” the company noted.
Remaining assays from the drilling campaign are anticipated within the next two weeks and Cervantes will make its decision on recalculating the Albury Heath resource or undertaking further exploration when they are at hand.
Resurrecting a historic mine
The high-grade Albury Heath gold project is centred on the historic Albury Heath underground gold mine, which produced 2,204oz gold at an average head grade of 47.8g/t (or 1.54oz/t) during its 1950s heyday.
The deposit’s mineralisation is associated with quartz veining, quartz stringers, quartz stockworks and wall rock alteration located in a major regional fault zone that trends north-north-easterly across the eastern side of the Meekatharra Greenstone Belt.
Cervantes owns six prospecting licences covering the mine and its surrounds, comprising 10.8 square kilometres.
In December 2016, the company announced it would redevelop the Albury Heath mine and fast-track production by either heap leach or toll treating.
By early afternoon trade, Cervantes shares had increased 71.4% to A$0.012.