It seems that Blackham Resources can walk and chew gum at the same time.
Even though the company is furiously preparing for the commencement of mining in 3 weeks at the Matilda Gold Project in Wiluna, they have still managed to add another 106 000 ounces of gold to their mining inventory since the delivery of their Definitive Feasibility Study just 4 months ago.
43 000 of those ounces have now been added to the free milling ore reserve at the project.
Recent successful drilling, resource upgrades, open pit and underground mine design optimisations have contributed to Blackham again upgrading their mining inventory and there appears to still be plenty of scope for further upgrades.
The mining inventory at the project now sits at 9.3Mt @ 2.9g/t gold for 873,000oz which is up 14% since the DFS.
However the entire project still boasts a resource of 46Mt @ 3.3g/t for 4.8Moz of gold so expect plenty more upgrades to the ore reserve which is only based on resources that are currently sitting at indicated status or above.
Blackham’s Executive Director, Alan Thom said: “Matilda gold production is now imminent. This announcement is a great result in both strengthening our reserves and lengthening the project life. The expansion of the free milling reserves gives us confidence that we can keep growing the size of the Matilda Gold Project.”
The latest upgrade alone has added around $180m worth of insitu gold to the current mining inventory which is expected to produce a net present value of free cash flows over the initial 8 year mine life of around $195m - and that doesn’t value any of the additional 3m ounces of gold that have not yet been upgraded to indicated status.
With only about 250m shares on issue, the maths on Blackham Resources starts to become quite intriguing given that the company is only trading at around 50c a share and they are just 3 weeks away from the commencement of mining.
By Matt Birney
