Red 5’s King of the Hills progressing to plan, updated gold mineral resource imminent
Red 5 is looking to develop a bulk open pit and underground operation at its King of the Hills gold project.
Red 5 (ASX: RED) is anticipating an update later this month to the existing 3.1 million ounce gold resource at its King of the Hills project in Western Australia.
The final feasibility study for the proposed stand-alone integrated bulk open pit and underground mining and processing operation remains on schedule for completion in the September quarter.
King of the Hills is located 80km south of the company’s Darlot gold mine and 28km from the town of Leonora in WA’s eastern goldfields. Up until now, Red 5 has focused on extracting ore from high grade gold veins at King of the Hills with the ore trucked to its Darlot processing plant.
The company is now targeting a bulk mining operation at King of the Hills based on the potential to economically extract low grade gold between the high grade veins.
Results from assaying historical diamond drilling core, together with current underground drilling programs, are expected to underpin the updated mineral resource.
Last week, Red 5 announced it had found 31,660m of drill core from 518 holes at the King of the Hills project completed between 2008 and 2016 by the previous owner which had never been assayed.
As a result, Red 5 evaluated the core with 7.1% of the holes returning intersections greater than 1 gram per tonne gold with 21.2% of the cores greater than 0.4g/t.
Highlight assays were 46.9m at 2.3g/t gold and 2m at 42.4g/t.
Mine construction manager appointed
Red 5 managing director Mark Williams said a mine construction manager had been appointed and would join the team later this month.
“We are also close to finalising the infrastructure and site layout, with results from sterilisation drilling expected shortly,” Mr Williams said.
“A clear pathway for project approvals has been defined with no significant hurdles expected, given that this is a brownfields mine development with a long operating history.”
Red 5 has now called tenders from contractors for open pit development with the contract expected to be awarded in the December quarter.
Flora and heritage surveys will begin later this month along the 13km power corridor that will link the company’s proposed processing plant to the goldfields gas pipeline.