Having just received the keys to its Sandstone project in Western Australia, gold developer Aurumin Limited is gearing up to begin systematically exploring with an initial round of auger drilling.
The vehicle-mounted program, due to kick off next week, is designed to build on five near-mill targets handed over from the previous owner – plus test a further 36 targets generated by the company.
The 849-hole campaign will see a mix of infill and explorative holes plunged after the precious yellow metal in addition to the growth of a multi-element dataset that will be used to guide further exploration.
Aurumin expects the work will generate drill targets and highlight areas for further infill work.
The mining lease is densely peppered with 11 existing deposits within roughly 2.5km of the project’s non-operating processing plant. Already being jampacked with gold, a 536-hole auger program in 2021 by the previous owners generated five additional underexplored targets.
After pouring over the geophysics and drone imagery Aurumin was able to delineate a further 49 areas of interest and plans to test 36 of those with the auger drill.
Aurumin Limited Managing Director, Brad Valiukas said: “There are already some good anomalies that we will infill and, importantly, we are looking for new anomalies. We hope that this work will lead to new discoveries…”
The Sandstone Gold project was only officially acquired from Middle Island on March 21 for $12 million in total, half in cash and half in shares.
It has a total resource of 784,000 ounces of gold at a grade of 1.1 grams per tonne gold. Interestingly, about 500,000 ounces of the resource comes from its underground component, where the rest would be minable through an open pit.
The project was previously mined as an open pit by Troy resources between 1999 and 2010, producing about 508,000 ounces of gold at an average grade of 3.6 grams per tonne gold. Having not operated since then, Aurumin believes it has what it takes to get it back into production.
Interestingly the company notes, the underground resource carries some extremely broad hits, including 185m going 2.13 g/t gold and 161m at 2.31 g/t gold. The lengthy intersections have Aurumin thinking a bit more work could see it define a mining inventory exceeding 2 grams per tonne.
Management says it is in the process of finalising the permits required for a reverse circulation and diamond drilling program to better define the underground potential.
From above, the greater region surrounding Sandstone appears to be a golden gallery of resources waiting to step forward into production. In addition to Aurumin’s Sandstone resource, the gold tallies of its proximal players – Rox Resources, Venus Metals Corporation, Alto Metals, Gateway Mining and Horizon Gold – combine to form nearly 6 million ounces of gold.
For now, Aurumin sees a path forward where it can upgrade its existing 500,000 tonnes per annum plant to 750,000tpa. A little down the line, however, it is also eyeing the possibility of Sandstone as a low-cost regional hub where it would regionally reel in dirt to feed a plant with a capacity of over 1.2Mtpa.of
Drawing its Johnson Range project into the fold with its 64,700 ounces of gold is also on its mind.
Aurumin has already run the numbers and concluded it would cost $30 per tonne to truck ore from Johnson Range north to Sandstone.
With its eyes fixed on the path ahead, pulses may start to quicken if it can manage to unlock the value hidden in its new acquisition.
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