Kin Mining announces resource upgrade at Cardinia Hills gold deposit
Kin Mining’s updated resource for the Cardinia Hill deposit totals 2.2Mt at 1.5g/t gold for 106,000oz of contained gold.
Junior explorer Kin Mining (ASX: KIN) has announced a 45,000 ounce increase to the mineral resource estimate at the recently-discovered Cardinia Hill gold deposit within its flasghip Cardinia project in Western Australia.
Updated figures released today have seen the deposit’s estimate rise to 2.2 million tonnes at 1.5 grams per tonne gold for 106,000oz of contained gold.
This is within the wider project’s global resource of 31.1Mt at 1.27g/t gold for 1.28Moz.
The resource includes a maiden underground inferred estimate of 125,000 tonnes at 2.71g/t gold for 11,000oz at a 2.0g/t cut-off grade and is constrained to the main lode which displays mineralisation continuity and is amenable to extraction methods.
The new estimate is based on a gold price of $2600 per ounce, utilising cost guidance from the Cardinia Hills pre-feasibility study with mining cost assumptions increased from previous optimisations and with a lower cut-off grade of 0.4g/t gold.
Continued updates
Managing director Andrew Munckton said the company would continue to update the mineral resource inventory as drilling results were received from a phase four program across the greater Cardinia project.
“We are pleased to have delivered an estimate of over 100,000oz for Cardinia Hill … we believe it holds potential for resource growth and category upgrades as we complete further drilling,” he said.
“We also have a strong pipeline of deposits outside of the latest resource estimate which are yet to be fully assessed including Eagle-Crow, Mount Flora, Iron King and further depth extensions to Bruno-Lewis and we expect to announce further [resource] updates during the coming year.”
Large-scale system
Discovered early last year, the Cardinia Hill deposit is believed to be a large-scale, high-grade mineralised system located approximately 2.5 kilometres northeast of the centre of the Cardinia gold project.
The deposit lies within the Welcome Well formation, which is a package of intermediate to felsic volcanic rocks and derived sediments.
The geology consists of a discordant structure with footwall andesitic volcanic rocks and dominantly hanging-wall dolerite and mafic intrusive rocks.
The northern lode of the deposit is controlled by the discordant Cardinia Hill fault, while the southern lode is controlled by a felsic porphyry in the fault’s hanging wall.
Both lodes have extensive carbonate replacement alteration, where the dolerite host rock is completely replaced by siderite and dolomite.
High-grade gold mineralisation is coincident with strongly anomalous and occasionally high-grade silver, bismuth, copper, molybdenum, lead, antimony, tellurium, tungsten and zinc.
Cardinia Hill’s 45,000oz resource increase has been attributed to depth extension of mineralisation in the southern and northern lodes which delivered a deeper pit optimisation shell and underground component; extensions to the deposit along strike to the north; and closer-spaced drilling in the near-surface environment of the southern lode which allowed for the inclusion of a partial indicated category.