Aruma wraps up maiden drilling at Melrose

Aruma Resources has wrapped up a 48 RC hole, 4,784m maiden drilling program at its Melrose Gold Project in the Pilbara targeting historic soil and drilling anomalies along trend from the 1.2-million-ounce Paulsens gold deposit which lies some 5km to the south.

Drilling was conducted on ten lines across structural targets similar to Paulsens and within a gold-in-soil anomaly. Historic drilling revealed lengthy gold zones up to 27m at 0.3 grams per tonne gold with individual metres going up to 2.74 grams per tonne gold. Aruma has drawn comparisons between these low-grade zones and the known halo zones around high-grade quartz sulphide lodes at Paulsens with the first two holes already submitted to the assay laboratory with results pending.

Aruma’s Melrose Gold Project, which contains the priority Gossan Hill prospect target, sits at the northern end of the Paulsens splay off the regional Nanjilgardy fault where an east-west subsidiary fault intersection is located. The 1.2-million-ounce Paulsens gold deposit and similar-sized Mount Olympus gold deposit which contains 15.2 million tonnes at 2.2 g/t gold for 1.08 million ounces of gold sits along the Nanjilgardy Fault corridor between the Aruma projects.

Aruma has over 10km of the interpreted gold trend commencing only 5km north of the Paulsens mine. At the southeast end of the regional Nanjilgardy fault where Aruma holds the Saltwater project, the company also commands over 20km of prospective strike.

Fellow ASX-listed explorer Black Cat Syndicate purchased the Paulsens mine in June 2022 for a cool $44.5 million. Paulsens boasts a complete mine infrastructure including a camp, a 450,000 tonnes per annum gold processing facility and a fully serviced decline. Black Cat Syndicate is accelerating exploration in its efforts to locate another Paulsens-sized deposit with a strong focus between the existing mine and the Aruma ground to the north.

From 2005 to when it was placed on care and maintenance in 2017, Paulsens produced over 4.2 million tonnes of ore at an average grade of 7.17 g/t for 909,344 ounces of gold. Production peaked in 2014 when 100,041 ounces of gold were produced.

Aruma has only commenced its work at the Gossan Hill prospect and the company will be hoping for a Paulsens replica on its extensive ground holding. With DeGrey’s Hemi and Kalamazoo’s Mount Olympus deposits making the Pilbara a world-class gold exploration hot spot, favourable results for Aruma are likely to put a spotlight on the company.

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