ASX-listed Marmota Ltd (ASX: MEU) is ramping up its first-ever drilling campaign at the company’s Campfire Bore gold discovery in South Australia, now expanding its maiden program from some 16,500m to a total of 20,000m of drilling.
The program will now be divided into two stages targeting high-grade, near surface gold mineralisation within its recently-formed Golden Moon joint venture (JV), located nearby the company’s flagship Aurora Tank gold project just 30km to the east.
Marmota has completed the first phase of reverse circulation (RC) drilling at Campfire Bore, which saw 86 holes drilled for a total of 11,690m.
Samples from stage 1 are currently on their way to the lab, with results anticipated by early December.
Management says Campfire Bore has “enormous potential to grow” having experienced minimal drilling of only near-surface gold, with some of the historic drilling only occurring in the top 20m – 30m from surface.
The company will now move to flesh-out the emerging Campfire Bore, with its belief the deposit could quickly rival the potentially open-pittable gold at its flagship nearby Aurora Tank project.
Drilling at Campfire Bore has been progressing very well, with up to 450m of RC drilling in a day. This is our first program at Campfire Bore: we are trying to develop a much better understanding of the location of high-grade mineralisation at Campfire Bore. We are very much looking forward to receiving assay results from the Stage 1 drilling.
Marmota Executive Chairman Dr. Colin Rose
Aurora Tank has recently undergone 7500m of drilling for a total of now more than 60,000m, in comparison to Campfire Bore where only 10,000m of drilling to date has already exposed some 109,000 ounces of near surface gold.
The strategic proximity of Campfire Bore to Aurora Tank, as well as the broader Golden Moon JV presents opportunistic synergies for Marmota in a now record gold environment. All of the Golden Moon JV resources lie close to surface—within 100m—making them amenable to open-pit mining and low-cost heap leach processing.
Marmota’s aspiration to move as quickly as possible to establish gold production comes as the gold price continues to push everyday new record highs, with prices exceeding AU$4,000 per ounce – a prospect once thought to be absurd. Notably, today’s gold price is more than double the price when earlier resource estimates were completed at Golden Moon in 2018 by prior owners.
As the company awaits assay results, the outlook for continued growth and resource expansion looks promising. With the Aurora Tank project moving toward production, Marmota is pushing its case to become South Australia’s next low-cost gold producer.
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