Kairos Minerals flags drilling at both brownfield and greenfield Pilbara gold targets

Kairos Minerals (ASX: KAI) plans to begin a 5,000m reverse circulation (RC) drilling program at its growing Pilbara gold project in mid-August begin, with the program to kick-off at Mt York and then move to Croydon.

This is part of a large 2020 exploration program that includes soil and rock chip sampling, mapping, airborne magnetic and radiometric surveys, sub-audio magnet surveys as well as RC drilling.

The Pilbara project area is about 100km south of Port Hedland and, since acquiring it in early 2016, Kairos has established a JORC indicated and inferred resource of 20.93 million tonnes at 1.3 grams per tonne of gold for a contained 873,000oz.

The ground includes the old Lynas Find mine which, between 1994 and 1998, produced more than 125,000oz.

Kairos regards its 1,236sq km project as being in the “epicentre” of the present-day Pilbara gold rush.

Executive chairman Terry Topping said the 2020 exploration drive was “about to move up a gear” with the upcoming drilling program.

With a recent $4.2 million capital raising, Kairos says it is fully funded for its upcoming exploration activities.

First target is historic Mt York ground

The first target for the drill rig is the Mt York deposit and it will be tested for a north-west extension of mineralisation. Only one historical hole has been carried out at the part of this target that lies within Kairos’ ground.

The adjacent ground, also named Mt York, is held by Pilbara Minerals (ASX: PLS) which in April reported an intercept of 16m at 2.43g/t gold. This hole is 1.2km from Kairos’ Mt York resource and within the same geological setting.

Mt York was mined between 1994 and 1998 when there was an average gold price of US$350/oz. Some 125,493oz were extracted at an average gold grade of 1.85g/t.

The drilling will test extensions at the Mt York site itself, along with Iron Stirrup and Old Faithful deposits within that project area.

The following target will be the company’s Croydon project, focusing on the greenfield targets of Fuego and Tierra.

In June, Kairos announced it had applied for two new exploration licences adjacent to already granted ground, doubling the size of its key Croydon project to 773.6sq km.

The areas now covered by these latest applications include the south-eastern edge of the Sisters Supersuit intrusions, which are in contact with the granite-greenstones units of the East Pilbara terrane. They are prospective for both intrusive-related and structural hosted mineralisation.

The company said at the time that the applications further strengthens Kairos’ exploration pipeline across its overall Pilbara gold ground.