WA-focused explorer Kairos Minerals turbocharged the mineral resource of its Mt York gold project by 500,000 ounces to 49.24 million tonnes at 1.02 grams per tonne for 1.62 million ounces of gold.
The company says its new numbers include a higher-grade component of 21 million tonnes at 1.5g/t for 1 million ounces and the mineralisation at its project, which is in tier-one gold country 100km south of Port Hedland, remains open.
The resource includes the Main Trend deposit, which is made up of the Main Hill, Breccia Hill and Gossan Hill prospects and two satellite deposits known as Iron Stirrup and Old Faithful. The latter pair sit a respective 5km and 7km north/north-east of Main Trend.
The Main Trend deposit stretches for 3km and its gold resource increased by 54 per cent from 900,000 ounces to 1.39 million ounces. Notably, the resource is currently constrained to 350m vertical depth, but remains open and leaves the door ajar for further upgrades.
Kairos Minerals managing director Dr Peter Turner said: “To add half-a-million ounces in just eight months is an outstanding result which reflects the quality and ongoing growth potential of Mt York. At 1.6 million ounces, Mt York now has genuine scale right in the heart of one of the world’s most desirable mining regions.”
The updated figures are as a result of the company’s efforts with the drill last year, in addition to new bulk density values of mineralised-banded iron formation host rock.
Not satisfied with its current numbers, the company believes there is real potential for growth, with further prospects to be examined. They include Gilt Dragon, which boasts historic drilling results of 19m at 1.31g/t gold from just 1m and containing 5m grading 3.19g/t from 4m.
Management plans to beef up its Main Trend numbers in its next phase of drilling by probing the Main Hill prospect, which it describes as “under-drilled”. It will also go looking for new satellite deposits in the Mt York region.
But the drill rig is not the company’s only growth weapon as it is also rolling its sleeves up on an open-pit optimisation study and crunching numbers on the project’s economics under different processing rates and gold price scenarios.
Kairos is also targeting large-scale lithium potential in Western Australia’s premier mining districts, having recently discovered spodumene-bearing pegmatites adjacent to its gold operation. It is now evaluating its potential for a fully-fledged lithium project.
Additionally, Kairos has extra balls in the air, exploring its 100 per cent-owned Roe Hills project, located 120km east of Kalgoorlie in WA’s Eastern Goldfields. The project covers 354 square kilometres of the Yilgarn Craton in an emerging lithium province, which the company has confirmed to host spodumene-bearing pegmatites in addition to more traditional greenstone-hosted gold and nickel mineralisation.
The company’s tenements lie between Breaker Resources’ 1.7-million-ounce Bombora gold deposit 20km to the north and Silver Lake Resources’ half-million-ounce Aldiss project to the south - all within the same north/south-trending greenstone belt.
Kairos is poised to drill-test a recently-discovered 1km-long light and heavy rare earths anomaly, which has produced early results going up to 553 parts per million total rare earths oxide.
With gold hitting a near-record-high of $3077 on May 5, it is not a bad time to be turning up more of the precious yellow metal. With an expansive drilling program to come and the prospect of lithium on the horizon, things could get very busy at Kairos as the rigs roll into action.
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By Steve Kaless
