Mining

Kairos Minerals completes gold drilling at Croydon, preps for Mt York campaign

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By Imelda Cotton - 
KairosKairos Minerals Croydon Minerals said new low-grade assays won’t distract from the Croydon gold project’s potential.

Kairos Minerals said new low-grade assays won’t distract from the Croydon gold project’s potential.

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A series of low-grade results from an initial round of drilling at Kairos Minerals’ (ASX: KAI) Croydon project near Port Hedland in Western Australia has not dampened the company’s belief that the acreage is highly prospective for gold.

Assays received from the first eight holes of 20 drilled at the Fuego target over a total 3,815m returned a maximum grade of 0.12 grams per tonne gold, believed to be associated with a low level of sulphides in the matrix of the project’s conglomerate unit.

Kairos executive chairman Terry Topping said the reverse circulation campaign still had its benefits, providing the company with a clearer understanding of the stratigraphy and its relationship with the mineralisation seen at surface.

“While the assays returned generally low-grade gold values, Fuego remains extremely prospective and this first round of drilling has given us a much clearer handle on where to target follow-up exploration,” he said.

“We also now have a clearer picture of the orientation of the key geological structures relative to the geophysical features defined by a recent SAM (sub-audio magnetic) survey.”

Tierra drilling

Another nine holes were completed as part of the same campaign at the Tierra prospect to the south of Fuego, for a total of 1,771m.

Four were drilled into the northern part of the prospect area, with one of the holes intersecting pyrite and chalcopyrite (copper sulphide) logged in an ultramafic unit and pyrite and arsenopyrite logged in a quartzite unit.

The last five holes were drilled in the southern part of the prospect area targeting intrusion-related gold mineralisation.

Kairos commenced an in-fill soil geochemistry program immediately after Tierra’s drilling, collecting 234 samples which were sent to a Perth laboratory for gold and multi-element analysis.

An additional soil sampling program is being conducted at the newly-defined Aqua prospect, located approximately 6km south of Tierra.

An intrusion known as Sisters Supersuite has been mapped by Geological Survey of WA at this prospect and a recently completed airborne radiometric survey has delineated a target area of 2.3km by 700m within Kairos ground.

Intrusive-hosted systems

The Croydon project is part of Kairos Minerals’ greater Pilbara gold project, which offers potential for the discovery of intrusive-hosted gold systems similar to De Grey Mining’s (ASX: DEG) nearby world-class Hemi deposit.

The Pilbara project includes a recently-upgraded 873,500-ounce JORC mineral resource across three key deposits adjacent to the world-class Pilgangoora lithium mining complex, 100km southeast of Port Hedland, WA.

Kairos said mining studies are underway to evaluate the best method of extracting value from the asset.