Larvotto Resources set for second drilling program at Hillgrove gold-antimony project

Larvotto Resources (ASX: LRV) has received final permits for a second exploration drilling program at the historic high-grade Hillgrove gold-antimony project in New South Wales.

The company said it would mobilise a rig to the site next week to commence 5,250 metres of reverse circulation drilling at the Clarks Gully prospect.

The program will target in-fill drilling to a 20m depth in an effort to increase confidence in the resource, focusing on a large untested geochemical anomaly to the south of Clarks Gully that has been defined from surface to 200m with measured and indicated resources of 266,000 tonnes at 3.8% antimony and 2 grams per tonne of gold for 10.6g/t gold equivalent (AuEq).

Exploration drilling

Larvotto commenced exploration drilling at Hillgrove in July to test the strike and depth extent of the mineralised zone and infill the defined resource to 20m spacing.

The work is aimed at rapidly increasing the resource base while converting the current measured and indicated estimate into an ore reserve.

Best intercepts to date have been 7m at 2.33g/t gold and 9.16% antimony (30.82g/t AuEq), 15m at 1.61g/t gold and 5.18% antimony (17.73g/t AuEq) and 16m at 1.52g/t gold and 3.41% antimony (12.12g/t AuEq).

Historic production

Hillgrove is a 254 square kilometre project comprising four exploration leases and 48 granted mining leases with a defined mineral resource containing 1.4 million ounces at 6.1g/t AuEq.

It is ranked amongst the top ten antimony projects worldwide and is Australia’s largest antimony deposit with associated high-grade gold.

Historically, the Hillgrove field has produced over 750,000oz of gold and 40,000t of antimony with multiple high-grade targets outside of the current resource identified for further exploration.

The field also contains largely untested tungsten mineralisation, which has traditionally been mined with gold and antimony but was never extracted during processing.

Critical minerals

Antimony and tungsten are considered critical minerals by multiple countries including the US, European Union, China and Australia.

Global antimony prices have increased dramatically in recent years due to its status as a critical component in solar panel production and efficiencies.

The commodity’s price has doubled to US$22,000 during the period that Larvotto has been involved at Hillgrove.