Nova Minerals commissions onsite preparation lab at Estelle to hasten assay turnaround times

In its bid to accelerate exploration and development Nova Minerals (ASX: NVA) has commissioned an onsite preparation laboratory at its Estelle gold project in Alaska.

The onsite sample preparation lab is now operational at the project with capacity to process up to 7,500 drill samples a month.

It expected to mitigate the long delays in assay turnaround times that are occurring in labs around the world.

Nova chief executive officer Christopher Gerteisen said the purpose-built lab will reduce costs “significantly”.

“It will improve assay turnaround times to release these mineral resource estimates much faster, allowing us to focus on the scoping study,” he added.

Aggressive exploration underway at Estelle

An “aggressive” infill and extensional drilling program is underway at the Korbel Main deposit at Estelle, with the company focused on substantially increasing the deposit’s 4.7 million ounce gold resource.

A fifth drill rig is expected to help to ramp up drilling at Korbel Main and the nearby RPM prospect.

“We expect this rig to be mobilised and start turning in the coming months. Drilling related news and results will continue to flow throughout 2021 and beyond,” Mr Gerteisen noted.

He added an updated resource for Korbel Main along with a maiden estimate for RPM will be announced in the December quarter.

Feasibility work

These resource updates are expected to expedite feasibility studies with a scoping study nearing completion.

The study was extended following “significant” assays last week that returned wide zones of higher-grade gold.

Highlight assays included 113m at 1 gram per tonne gold, 30m at 1.9g/t gold, 3m at 11.7g/t gold and 110m at 0.5g/t gold.

These results are expected to provide a “huge material upside” for the economics in the scoping study.

With the scoping study pending, pre-feasibility work has already started, with metallurgical test work being carried out on Korbel Main ore.