Kairos Minerals strikes gold in final eight holes at Mt York

Pilbara gold explorer Kairos Minerals (ASX: KAI) has intersected gold in its final eight holes from its drilling campaign at its 100%-owned Mt York project in Western Australia.

The final eight holes all struck gold with better intersections including 11m at 1.17 grams per tonne gold, with a 4m interval containing 2.32g/t gold, 6m grading 2.06g/t gold, and 4m grading 4.87g/t gold.

The results support previous drilling which returned intersections such as 22m grading 1.93g/t, with a 5m interval grading 7.02g/t gold, 30m grading 1.30g/t gold with a 7m interval comprising 2.23g/t gold, and 11m grading 6.97g/t gold.

“This drilling program has delivered an exceptional outcome for Kairos, confirming the continuity of gold mineralisation to the east of the existing Breccia Hill resource and highlighting the outstanding potential within the Banded Iron Formation that extends over a current identified strike length of 3.5km,” Kairos executive chairman Terry Topping said.

Mr Topping said the drilling results will be incorporated into an updated JORC-compliant resource estimate for Mt York.

He added the company anticipated releasing the updated resource by the end of March 2018.

“In addition, we are also planning to undertake further drilling along untested portions of the identified Banded Iron Formation at Mt York, which we believe offers significant potential to further extend the gold mineralisation,” he said.

Eric Sprott takes a punt on Kairos

In late October, billionaire gold investor Eric Sprott snapped up a A$5 million slice in Kairos via his Sprott Capital Partners vehicle.

At the time, Mr Topping referred to the investment as a “watershed” moment for the junior gold explorer which has an existing 258,000-ounce gold resource at Mt York.

Pilbara gold rush

Although dampened down in the last month, since September, the Pilbara region has been awash in a modern-day gold rush – with Novo Resources (TSXV: NVO) triggering the hype after reporting multiple nugget discoveries at its jointly owned Purdy’s Reward prospect in the area.

What had everyone in a lather was the resemblance of the watermelon seed-shaped coarse gold nuggets to the world’s largest known gold deposit in South Africa.

Similar-style nuggets originate from the South Africa’s Witwatersrand gold reef which has produced more than 1.5 billion oz of the precious metal and more to come.

As other explorers such as De Grey Mining (ASX: DEG) and Artemis Resources (ASX: ARV) announced numerous nugget discoveries, the region became a hotspot with explorers pegging up ground and investors grabbing whatever slice of the pie they could.

However, in late November Artemis and Novo declared exploring for the mineralisation had not proved as easy as initially thought. Novo reported the more expensive bulk trenching exploration method was better-suited for the conglomerate-style mineralisation in the region.

Kairos’ share price slipped more than 4% in early morning trade to sit at A$0.042.