Infill sampling upgrades tenor of Spartan gold target for DiscovEx Resources and Gateway Mining

Infill and extensional soil sampling assays have confirmed the size and upgraded the tenor of DiscovEx Resources’ (ASX: DCX) Spartan gold discovery, located within the Edjudina project near Kalgoorlie in Western Australia.

The Spartan anomaly lies within tenements that form an 80:20 joint venture between DiscovEx and Gateway Mining (ASX: GML) located at Edjudina.

Under the terms of the joint venture, following Gateway’s sale of an 80% interest in the tenements, Gateway retained a 20% free carried interest up until a decision to mine is made at which point it can elect to contribute or dilute its interest. Gateway also owns a 1.5% gross revenue royalty over the tenements (excluding iron ore).

The work was designed to confirm the dimensions of the original anomaly and the results are believed to correlate well with the first phase of sampling.

The target area remains approximately 1.8km in length and 500m in width and grades more than 25 parts per billion gold.

It now includes several results of more than 100ppb gold (or 0.1 gram per tonne), peaking at 544ppb Au (0.54g/t).

In addition to the samples collected at Spartan, results were also received from a regional program which highlighted an additional target area approximately 3.5km to the east known as the Falcon prospect.

This target is characterised by a 2.6km-long anomaly grading more than 15ppb gold which remains open to the north.

Continuity, scale and tenor

Managing director Toby Wellman said the continuity, scale and tenor of the Spartan discovery was encouraging.

“You’d be hard pressed to find a better-looking gold anomaly than what our exploration team has generated at Spartan,” he said.

“A coherent zone of multiple plus-0.1g/t gold results in an area where the nearest historic gold operation is 25km away suggests the anomalous gold is coming from mineralisation not yet discovered.”

The project has been subject to little previous exploration, providing DiscovEx an opportunity to unearth a huge area for future discovery.

“With the addition of new tenure to the north, we now control close to 2,000 square kilometres to continue our exploration efforts,” Mr Wellman said.

Soil sampling

Following the identification of the Spartan anomaly in May, an additional program of soil sampling was initiated to better understand the distribution of results within the anomaly and regionally.

Infill sample spacing on 100m by 100m centres returned significant results ranging from 108ppb gold to 544ppb gold.

Mr Wellman said the continuity and consistency of results within the anomaly was “extremely encouraging” considering background gold-in-soil levels at Edjudina are generally in the order of 3ppb gold.

“Results of this tenor and scale in a greenfields exploration environment are not common and we are extremely excited to progress our exploration efforts towards a first-pass aircore drilling program later this year,” he said.

A gravity survey is also scheduled to begin within the fortnight, with data planned to be used for ongoing interpretation of project-scale geology.

It is anticipated the survey will aid in the definition of multiple intrusive bodies identified from magnetics, with the information used in the drill planning process.