Brightstar chases gold extensions with fresh WA drilling campaign

Brightstar Resources is set to kick off a fresh 6300m RC drilling campaign at its flagship Cork Tree Well, or “CTW” project as it looks to extend its gold mineralisation along strike to the north and at depth. The company says the 30 hole program will also include infill drilling at the main structure as it looks to convert inferred gold mineralisation into indicated JORC resource status.

In August last year Brightstar updated its mineral resource estimate for CTW.  The company unveiled 5.6 million tonnes at 1.4 grams per tonne gold for 252,000 ounces adding 15,100 ounces, or 6 per cent on the previous JORC resource. Brightstar said at the time its work at CTW had increased its confidence in the location, morphology and grade consistency of the mineralisation.

The new campaign will target additional strike length of an untested mineralised structure that was revealed by previous drilling in December last year. Assay results from that exploration include 6m at 3.17 g/t gold from 182 metres. Brightstar says the drill hole confirms continuity of zone 1 shoot highlights and extends the known shoot size to approximately 400m along strike and about 100m below previous drill holes.

Brightstar Resources Managing Director, Alex Rovira said: “Cork Tree Well remains a key focus for Brightstar as an improved resource will provide the baseload feed for potential future mining operations. In addition, Cork Tree Well provides the flexibility to be blended with higher grade ore sources, including the nearby Alpha deposit or various high-grade ore sources from Menzies delivered through the proposed merger with Kingwest Resources Ltd.”

The company also believes the mineral resource estimate shows potential for an underground operation in addition to open pit mining.

CTW is located 33km north of Laverton and 70km from Brightstar’s mothballed processing plant which the company is hoping to fire up to process its gold. In addition, the processing operation could include not only ore from CTW but also from other nearby prospects such as the Alpha deposit with its 1.4 million tonnes at 2.3g/t for 106,000 ounces gold, Beta deposit with 1.9 million tonnes at 1.7g/t for 101,000 ounces gold and its Hawks Nest project.

Brightstar closed out last year with an agreement to merge with Kingwest Resources in a move to consolidate the gold assets of each company and bring their combined operations a step closer to production.

The agreement has been made through a scheme of arrangement under which Brightstar will acquire 100 per cent of the shares in Kingwest.

Once the deal has been finalised, Kingwest shareholders will hold around 43 per cent and Brightstar shareholders will hold about 57 per cent of the merged group.

The merger will bring the combined companies’ assets in the Goldfields region of WA to 21 million tonnes going 1.5 g/t gold for a total of 965,000 ounces of gold. The total includes Kingwest’s Menzies gold project that hosts a mineral resource of 11.7 million tonnes at 1.33 g/t for 505,000 gold ounces and Brightstar’s Alpha, CTW and Beta deposits that combine for 8.9 million tonnes at 1.6 g/t for 460,000 ounces of gold.

Ore from both companies is expected to be processed at Brightstar’s Laverton facility that is currently under care and maintenance.

With a growing number of balls in the air Brightstar will be keen to see if it can beef up the numbers of its flagship project as it mulls over the dusting off its Laverton facility.

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