After polishing off a two-month drilling campaign at its Aurora Tank gold discovery in South Australia’s Gawler Craton, ASX-listed Marmota (ASX: MEU) has taken another step towards a first open-pit mine at the site.
The reverse-circulation (RC) drilling program was extended from the originally planned 58 holes to 90 holes to ensure adequate infill to close off open-ended sections and to acquire more data in areas where previous drilling was too shallow. The additional holes increased an initial design for 5200m of drilling out to 7692m, with hole depths in the program averaging 85m.
Management says it has now collected all of the samples from the latest campaign and they are expected to soon be delivered to an Adelaide laboratory for testing. Assay results are expected to be returned early next month.
The company discovered the remarkable Aurora Tank gold mineralisation more than two years ago when its attention was drawn to the target by a host of high-grade gold results from follow-up drilling of a previous significant intercept, which included a 1m assay at 36 grams per tonne from 120m downhole.
The follow-up drilling produced intercepts of 4m at 18g/t gold from 76m, 4m going 12g/t gold from 116m and 4m running 6g/t gold from 72m downhole – all of which pointed to the genuine geological possibility of high-grade gold at close-to-surface depths. Marmota’s work to date has shown that Aurora Tank has an abundance of high-grade gold within 20m to 50m from surface.
Recent drilling shows the prospect contains some eye-catching gold intercepts, including near-surface grades exceeding 100g/t in 1m samples and many other hits between 1m and 3m going more than 30g/t gold. Management says its “outstanding” gold intersections have been shown to come from five different zones at the project.
The high-grade, near-surface resource potential led the company to consider a fast, low-cost pathway to gold production through open-pit mining with metallurgically-optimised gold recovery. Management says its metallurgical testwork is now more than 85 per cent complete and it considers its Aurora Tank project to now be at an advanced stage.
Marmota is now looking at being up and running as soon as possible and pouring gold bars while prices for the yellow metal are running close to historic highs.
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