Aurumin drill deal sets up future exploration

ASX-listed explorer Aurumin has entered into a drill for equity agreement with contractor Topdrill ahead of the company’s planned campaign at its Central Sandstone project about 520km north-east of Perth.

According to the agreement, Aurumin can pay up to 50 per cent of its drilling costs invoiced by Topdrill by issuing ordinary shares from its placement capacity up to a maximum of $1 million.

Aurumin says the issue price will be determined by the five-day volume weighted average price immediately preceding each invoice and shares are to be escrowed for six months from the invoice date.

Aurumin Managing Director, Brad Valiukas said: “This is great industry support from Topdrill, one of the best drilling contractors in WA, for both the company and our projects.”

The gold explorer is tantalisingly close to joining the magic million-ounce club after recently revealing a gold inventory of 946,000 ounces in WA’s Mid West region. The figure comes after resource updates for the company’s newly acquired Central Sandstone deposits and incorporating its nearby Johnson Range project into one operation.

Aurumin officially acquired the 784,000-ounce Central Sandstone project in March after striking a $12 million cash and scrip deal with Middle Island Resources late last year that included a processing plant. Following a successful RC campaign the explorer was able to include an additional 97,000 ounces at the site. The company also boosted the gold grade of the operation’s Two Mile Hill underground deposit from 1.1 grams per tonne to 1.6 g/t.

The Johnson Range project hosts a mineral resource of 64,700 ounces at a grade of 2.51 g/t gold and is located between Sandstone and Southern Cross.

The company’s upcoming drill program will focus on targets recently identified by a geochemical program in addition to structural anomalies with exploration to begin early in the new year.

Aurumin enjoyed an impressive RC and diamond drill campaign at Sandstone earlier this year with a string of wide intercepts at respectable grades. Assay highlights include a massive 352.8m intersection at 1.5 g/t gold from 267.2m. The more than 350m intercept contained a number of high-grade hits with one 8.4m section going 9.3 g/t gold from 392.2m including 0.6m reading an outstanding 119 g/t gold.

In July the company returned assay results at its Two Mile Hill deposit from the first hole drilled at the site that recorded a broad 344m hit going 1.29 g/t gold. A second hole at the site recorded a 224m intersection going 1.5 g/t gold from 229.6m.

With its new deal with Topdrill now official, Aurumin will be looking to continue its impressive run of wide gold hits at Central Sandstone into the new year.

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