Classic Minerals (ASX: CLZ) has pumped up the combined indicated resources for its Lady Ada and Lady Magdalene deposits to establish a new mark of 69,966 ounces of gold at the company’s Forrestania project (FGP) near Southern Cross in Western Australia.
Management says its inferred resource for the two projects now shows more than 227,613 gold ounces, bringing the combined indicated and inferred categories to 297,579 ounces. The upgrades come just 20 days after management secured a 21-year mining licence for the FGP, with the sale of the ground by Redivium still subject to the extension of a completion date to July 31.
However, both parties remain fully committed to the deal and during the remaining month and a half before the completion, Classic is responsible for maintaining the ground. The FGP ground lies about 60km due north of Classic’s Kat Gap gold project, which is in turn about 35km north/north-east of the Eastern Wheatbelt town of Lake King.
When the indicated resources for both FGP and Kat Gap are combined, the company now finds itself sitting on 90,454 ounces of gold in that category. And more significantly, the total FGP and Kat Gap project resource inventory for both indicated and inferred categories now stands at about 8.1 million tonnes at an average grade of 1.45 grams per tonne gold for a total of 377,946 ounces.
With the FGP acquisition bringing nearly four-times the existing Kat Gap combined resources into Classic’s total inventory, the deal provides a significant extension to the combined project life. It is described by the company as a “pivotal milestone in the project’s advancement towards further development”.
The FGP resource upgrade and increased confidence level arises from the integration of additional 2021 drilling data, which included twinning of and infill drilling around historic drillholes, with statistical analysis confirming the integrity of previous work. The process had the effect of punting 41,823 ounces of the Lady Magdalene inferred gold into the indicated category when, prior to the re-evaluation, all of its resource was in the inferred category. Additionally, the reassessment has booted a handy 11,543 ounces out of the inferred and into the indicated category at Lady Ada.
Overall, Classic’s FGP acquisition appears to have been a timely strategic move that not only buys it extended life but does so without adding the complexities of a total project move.
And the Kat Gap gold plant will remain capable of processing new feed from the northern “Ladies” projects, with the relatively straight-forward addition of a haul road – a Classic move, indeed.
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