Hillgrove Resources Strikes High-Grade Copper-Gold at Kanmantoo Mine’s Emily Star Zone

Hillgrove Resources (ASX: HGO) has achieved further success in what has a busy month to date at its Kanmantoo mine in South Australia, with the first results from drilling activity at the project’s Emily Star zone returning high-grade copper-gold mineralisation.

Highlight results from the first hole included 6.3 metres at 1.76% copper and 0.12 grams per tonnes gold from 425.15m downhole, 19.1m at 1.91% copper and 0.15g/t gold from 500m, and 5.7m at 2.12% copper and 0.36g/t gold from 531m.

Importantly, the results have confirmed a mineralisation corridor between the Emily Star and Nugent zones, and improved the company’s understanding of the prospect’s width and grade.

Testing Emily Star Extent

Hillgrove’s drilling to target the extent of the Emily Star zone is ongoing with plans to use the results to plan future drill holes, and help the company design a drill platform to specifically target Emily Star from the Nugent decline.

The news from Emily Star follows promising results from the Nugent zone, where Hillgrove has now completed its acceleration project, leading to the successful processing of 6,167 tonnes of development ore from the 1020 level.

Extensional and infill drilling at Nugent also returned multiple outstanding intersections, including 21m @ 0.85% copper and 0.98g/t gold from 136m, and 15m @ 0.91% copper and 0.29g/t gold from 161m.

These results will help Hillgrove better understand the Nugent orebody in preparation for first production, which remains on track to commence in the December quarter.

High-Priority Program

Chief executive officer Bob Fulker said the Emily Star diamond drill program had been a high priority for the company.

“Emily Star is a stacked mineralisation lode that has the potential to deliver multiple additional mining fronts at Kanmantoo—along with Nugent, it has the potential to deliver a material increase in mining rates,” he said.

“We previously thought that the southern extent of Nugent had lower gold grade, […] but these results show this is not the case,” Mr Fulker said.

“Emily Star represents the next organic opportunity in our pipeline after Nugent that, if developed, will allow us to further utilise our existing plant capacity and drive down unit costs.”