Impact Minerals picks up overlooked and ‘cheap-to-drill’ gold target in WA

Impact Minerals (ASX: IPT) is acquiring an 80% interest in a drill-ready — but long forgotten — gold project in an area of the Eastern Goldfields that hosts the “world class” St Ives gold mining centre.

The Doonia project is located in the Mt Belches Basin, 75km east of Kambalda, Western Australia.

The ground has an identified gold-in-soil anomaly that is 2.5km long and up to 1km wide, and which includes “numerous” small prominent magnetic anomalies.

Impact said the target was identified following a review of the Eastern Goldfields for intrusion-related gold deposits.

This was sparked by the Hemi discovery made by De Grey Resources (ASX: DEG) in the Pilbara, where a major gold deposit was hosted by felsic intrusions.

“Associated multi-metal anomalism suggests an intrusion-hosted gold target,” Impact said in today’s announcement.

Hopes for “out-of-the-box” discovery

Impact said Doonia has been recognised as a large but poorly tested gold-in-soil anomaly and it has not been pegged.

Shallow air core drilling in the 1990s was not followed up at depth.

Impact’s consultants drew the company’s attention to the project and it submitted a tenement application in joint venture with privately-owned Odette Resources.

As soon as the tenement is granted, drilling will test a clearly defined target.

Impact managing director Mike Jones said the company acted very quickly when alerted to this opportunity.

“We now have an exploration project with excellent indications for the discovery of a significant gold deposit with a target that is already well-defined, easily manageable and cheap to test.”

“The recent discovery of Hemi is a classic example of ‘you don’t find what you don’t look for’, where for decades it was considered that a deposit of that size and scale was unlikely to be found in the Pilbara Craton,” Dr Jones added.

He believes there is a good chance that Doonia may also be an “out-of-the-box” discovery.

Historical exploration results now made public

In 1999, the former mining major WMC Resources took 721 soil chemistry samples at Doonia.

Two encouraging gold-in-soil anomalies were defined and tested by 65 air core holes, with the holes ranging in depth from 3m to 52m. The geochemistry results included values of gold, bismuth, nickel and copper.

However, this was at a time when the gold price was at its nadir and many projects were deemed not worth further exploration due to the low price for the metal.

Impact said today’s announcement is the first time those results have been reported according to the JORC 2012 code.

The company said although the gold values were low, the area is underlaid by sandy soil and colluvium that are known to dilute soil chemistry responses.