Blackham Resources has discovered another $1.4b worth of in-ground gold at the Matilda Gold Project in Wiluna since June this year.
Whilst no where near all of this amount will drop to the bottom line, it’s still a staggering statement to make about a company that is still only capped at around $150m.
There seems no end in sight to the continual resource upgrades at the Matilda Gold Project with this week’s upgrade adding a massive 900,000 new ounces of gold to the project.
The latest upgrade caps of a stellar year of exploration for the company who seemingly couldn’t put a foot wrong with their exploration program which has taken the project from 5.1m ounces to 6m ounces in just 6 months.
The project is expected to churn out 100,000 ounces a year when fully operational however Blackham is already undertaking a study to boost annual production to more than 200,000 ounces on the back of the enhances resource.
Blackham’s managing director, Bryan Dixon, said “The latest Wiluna resource upgrade is likely to add significant base load open pit and underground feed for the Wiluna expansion study currently underway. Very few gold operations in first class jurisdictions have the scale to be +200,000 ounce-per-annum operations. Projects of this size generally sit in billion or multi-billion dollar producers.”
Total estimated resources at the Matilda Gold Project have jumped from 48Mt at 3.3 g/t for 5.1M ounces to 58Mt at 3.2 g/for 6.0M ounces.
The biggest addition came from a maiden resource estimate for a combined East-West open pit, which added 700,000 ounces.
Blackham have devised a new open pit model that combines historic pits and accesses higher grade ore that was previously slated for underground mining.
If it goes ahead under the Stage 2 expansion, the massive new pit will be even bigger than the 1.9km-long Happy Jack to Bulletin “super-pit” that was mooted last week after the announcement of a series of great new drill intercepts.
Blackham reported that the new resource estimate still did not include a large zone of mineralisation between the East and West open pits, which could further improve the economics of a combined pit. Furthermore, it could potentially allow the massive new pit to be extended to include the old North pit.
The new resources within the East-West pit are located within 1.5km of the Wiluna mill, which has been refurbished and is quickly approaching its processing capacity of 1.7Mtpa. Blackham’s resource update included a picture of last week’s pour of 1,989 ounces of ore, which are now safely in the vault awaiting monetization.
With an all in sustaining cost base of AUD$1120 an ounce verses a gold price of around AUD$1550 an ounce and a massive increase in free milling ore discovered this year, Blackham have substantially de-risked this project and it looks to be mostly upside from here.
By Matt Birney
