Red 5 delivers exceptional gold results from Eastern Goldfields in WA

Gold exploration is proving to be rather bountiful for Red 5 (ASX: RED) as the gold explorer reported encouraging gold hits from its ongoing drilling activities in Western Australia earlier today.

Red5 is continuing its systematic near-mine and regional exploration program at its Eastern Goldfields tenements, with latest results indicating strong potential for near-term resource and reserve growth, the company said.

Currently, the gold junior sports a 2.4-million-ounce resource inventory spread across 4 distinct projects, located in both Australia and the Philippines. Its Australian-based projects are both focused on underground mining with a current estimate of 1.3 million ounces of gold.

Red 5 said it is confident of delivering an updated resource estimate by the middle of this year given the strong results it has obtained from Darlot and King of the Hills (KOTH) – two of its most productive prospects.

Underground mining commenced at KOTH in January this year with the company saying that “ramp-up is progressing well” at a recent mining conference, adding that it forecasts 85,000-95,000 ounces of gold from the project this calendar year.

Meanwhile, Red 5 hailed its Darlot project as “treasure trove of opportunity” that contains multiple extension and underground targets in development. Red 5 confirmed that a second underground drill rig would be initiated in June with a focus on “near-mine targets and 3D seismic targets.”

Exploration progress

Resource in-fill and extensional drilling at both projects have delivered very high-grade mineralised intercepts in the near-mine environment, with substantial potential for Reserve growth in multiple locations close to existing underground infrastructure,” said Mr Mark Williams, managing director of Red 5.

Some of the standout drill results have come from the Darlot gold project where Red 5 has posted “exceptional” assay results as high as 9.0m @ 68g/t gold from 80.5m, 4.5m @ 50g/t gold from 67.7m and 14.0m @ 36.6g/t gold from 57.1m.

In addition, drilling targeting down-dip extensions to the CDA Oval Resource has identified two prominent shoots below 655 metres.

At its Waikato South open pit, Red 5’s resource in-fill and extensional drilling is now complete after the gold explorer conducted 77 RC drill holes drilled for a total of 2,451 metres.

The first batch of assay results from this program, comprising 26 drill holes from the north-west end of the Waikato South resource returned encouraging results which demonstrate “good continuity of mineralisation along strike,” the company said in a statement.

These results highlight the potential of the Waikato South orebody and indicate the potential to expand the historical resource along strike between the Waikato and Waikato South prospects.

Red 5 said that the next phase of drilling at the Waikato South prospect will focus on identifying and confirming the continuity of the mineralisation along the 1,000m strike length that currently defines the Waikato South prospect.

Importantly, the Waikato South historical resource remains open to the north-west, the north-east and at depth, and offers significant extensional opportunities outside and below the current scoping study pits.

Furthermore, Red 5 revealed it expects to conduct further exploration drilling along “poorly tested parts” of western part of Darlot, an area which host to the Waikato South orebody. This could mean Red 5 delivers further strong assay results in the near term.

Today’s results helped the company’ share price to a 6% gain and takes its performance over the past year to 83%, currently trading at A$0.075.