Kula Gold has kicked off reconnaissance reverse-circulation (RC) drilling at its Brunswick project in Western Australia’s South West region, with the aim of testing structural gold and lithium targets from surface pegmatites at the operation.
In March, the company used drones to help identify a slew of drill targets across two key prospects as part of a reconnaissance fieldwork mission at Brunswick, which sits 35km from the world-class Greenbushes mine. Kula says it has now contracted Stark Drilling to conduct the RC program to test the anomalous areas defined by its drone survey.
Key indications from the work highlighted a potential strike of 1.7km at the company’s Donnybrook Gold Mine (DBGM) prospect and an interpreted strike length of almost 2km at its Hippy Lady operation. Both prospects have been earmarked for potential lithium-caesium-tantalum mineralisation following the discovery of pegmatites, including a significant structure at DBGM that the company believes could be a hidden pegmatite with a lithium anomaly on the surface.
The Brunswick project covers a 300-square-kilometre holding prospective for a suite of commodities in addition to lithium, including gold, copper, nickel and platinum group elements. Kula returned grades of up to 7.95 grams per tonne gold from the early-stage exploration it conducted near DBGM last year.
The combination of some very encouraging, outcrop, geochemistry and geophysics ranks this high on our priority list and we expect the drilling to be completed at the end of May. We look forward to sharing the outcomes of this work with our Shareholders once the preliminary pLIBS and assay results are returned. Kula Gold executive officer Ric Dawson
The Talison Lithium-run Greenbushes mine is about 250km south of Perth and churns out close to 1.95 million tonnes of lithium spodumene each year. The project is considered the gold standard in terms of hard-rock lithium production.
Spodumene from Greenbushes is derived from the fresh, unweathered zones of the open-pit mine’s pegmatites and the operation’s success has led several hopeful players to pick up ground in the areas adjacent to the heavy-hitting operation.
Talison Lithium, a joint venture between IGO and Albemarle, has two lithium processing plants in operation at Greenbushes, about 250km south of Perth.
The first plant came on stream in 1985. The second officially opened in 2019, more than doubling the capacity at the mine to 1.34 million tonnes per annum of lithium concentrates, and a third plant is awaiting regulatory approval.
The area has become a hotspot for several other hopefuls wading into the fray, including Galan Lithium, which has staked ground less than 5km south of Greenbushes.
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