WA-focused gold exploration and development company Classic Minerals (ASX: CLZ) has confirmed the discovery of a new zone of mineralisation at the Kat Gap gold project, approximately 50km from its flagship Forrestania discovery.
The new zone was identified during a 22-hole, 3000-metre reverse circulation drilling program which kicked off at Forrestania last month to improve and increase known mineralisation at Kat Gap and the neighbouring Lady Magdalene target.
Previously thought to be barren, the new gold zone was identified 30m west of the main Kat Gap mineralisation hosted within granite and totally missed by previous drilling.
Best reported assay results were 8m at 7.14 grams per tonne gold from 82m including 1m at 21.10g/t gold from 82m; 4m at 7.44g/t gold from 92m; and 3m at 10.70g/t gold from 69m including 1m at 23.10g/t gold from 69m.
Other holes drilled along the main Kat Gap mineralisation also returned significant high-grade gold intercepts.
Best results from 11 of 12 holes drilled were 8m at 19.05g/t gold from 32m, including 4m at 28.80g/t gold from 32m; and 12m at 7.52g/t gold from 39m, including 2m at 20.20g/t gold from 48m.
Classic Minerals chief executive officer Dean Goodwin said Kat Gap is shaping up to become a prolific, shallow, high-grade gold deposit with considerable remaining upside potential.
“These new results bode well for the whole Forrestania project given that the main granite-greenstone contact [at Kat Gap], of which we have 40 kilometres of strike, has been largely overlooked,” he said.
An open-ended, unmined deposit
The Kat Gap target contains a shallow, unmined gold deposit discovered in the 1990s and the subject of resource estimations and scoping studies by Sons of Gwalia in 2003.
The high-grade, open-ended deposit lies within a 5km-long geochemical gold anomaly which has seen very little historical drill testing.
The Lady Magdalene target by comparison, is a large, modestly-graded deposit which appears to host high-grade, cross-cutting gold lodes within existing drill lines approximately 100m to 200m apart.
Classic’s current drilling program will further test the extent of strike, dip and grade of these lodes over 12 holes for a total 1060m.
Better results already returned include 1m at 13.40g/t gold from 64m; 1m at 9.36g/t gold from 44m; and 4m at 3.90g/t gold from 46m.
Classic also reported that Lady Magdalene’s main ore zone has yielded further thick zones of gold mineralisation, with results including 10m at 2.10g/t gold from 43m; 11m at 2.39g/t gold from 38m; and 10m at 1.51g/t gold from 65m.
Aggressive follow-up program
The Forrestania gold project, situated across 450 square kilometres approximately 120km from the town of Southern Cross, contains an existing JORC mineral resource of 5.3 million tonnes at 1.39g/t for 240,000 ounces of gold, with a recent scoping study confirming the technical and financial viability of the project.
Classic’s current drilling program at Forrestania has been labelled an “aggressive follow-up” to an earlier campaign which identified a new discovery at Van Uden West and multiple high-grade gold hits at Kat Gap and Lady Lila targets.
“All of the drilling programs undertaken [by us] at Forrestania have yielded high-grade gold hits,’ Mr Goodwin said.
“There is no doubt in my mind that this is a major gold camp containing significant undiscovered resources and we are on the right path to discover and delineate these ore bodies.”
At midday, shares in Classic Minerals were up 25% to $0.005.
