Kalamazoo Resources granted exploration licence for Myrtle gold project
Alluvial and hard rock production in Victoria’s Bendigo Zone has generated more than 60Moz of gold.
Kalamazoo Resources (ASX: KZR) has been granted a five-year exploration licence for its Myrtle gold discovery, which sits over 44 square kilometres of the prolific Bendigo Zone within the central Victorian goldfields.
Myrtle is located on the southern border of the north central Victorian goldfields’ Tender Block 4, approximately 15km northeast of Kalamazoo’s Castlemaine gold project and adjacent to Kirkland Lake Gold’s (ASX: KLA) exploration tenure and 30km south of Kirkland’s world-class Fosterville mine.
The exploration licence is considered to be prospective for high-grade Fosterville-style mineralisation, yet has no historical drilling on record and has not been subject to systematic modern exploration techniques.
Kalamazoo applied for the exploration licence in March as a way of strategically growing its position within the region.
Expanding tenure
Chief executive officer Luke Reinehr said the addition of the Myrtle project expands Kalamazoo’s Victorian exploration tenure in the highly-endowed Bendigo Zone to approximately 515sq km.
The zone has historically yielded in excess of 60 million ounces gold from alluvial and hard rock production.
“Myrtle is a great addition to our Victorian portfolio, given its proximity to our Castlemaine and South Muckleford gold projects,” he said.
“It will play an important role in our strategy to consolidate exploration tenure in the immediate vicinity of Fosterville and the highly-prospective goldfields.”
High-quality projects
The development of Myrtle is in line with Kalamazoo’s strategy of acquiring and exploring high-quality projects with a target threshold of 1Moz at grades above 10 grams per tonne gold.
The company plans to employ a “low impact” exploration program starting with regional-scale soil sampling utilising Ultrafine+ multi-element geochemical analysis – a technique which has successfully identified gold exploration targets at Kalamazoo’s other projects in the Bendigo Zone.
Ground release tender
In February, Kalamazoo lodged a bid for Blocks 3 and 4 of the north central Victorian goldfields ground release tender.
Experienced and progressive minerals explorers were invited to tender for mineral exploration rights to one or more licences over four parcels (or blocks) of prospective ground, ranging in size from 327sq km to 512sq km.
The tender is believed to have been competitive given the region’s prominence and evaluation of responses is currently being conducted by an independent assessment panel.
The Victorian Government is expected to award the blocks later this year.
Undiscovered gold
Geological Survey of Victoria estimates there may be up to 75Moz of gold yet to be discovered in the central and north central Victorian goldfields across the northern Bendigo, Stawell and Melbourne geological zones.
Simulations predict that up to 32Moz of this undiscovered endowment occurs under cover in the northern Bendigo Zone and the blocks available for tender cover part of that area.