High-grade gold sweetens Meeka’s Murchison Turnberry mine

Meeka Metals continues its indomitable run of high-grade, shallow, open-pittable gold numbers from its flagship Murchison gold project near Meekatharra in Western Australia, with 10 metres at 5.20 grams per tonne (g/t) gold, including 2m at 23.23g/t.

The headline hit began at 37m downhole depth in Meeka’s latest resource expansion drilling program, south of the company’s Turnberry Central stage one oxide pit design.

Four other encouraging adjacent intercepts include 1m at 15.83g/t gold from 61m and 16m assaying 1.39g/t gold from 34m, including 7m going 2.25g/t gold. 

Two other holes delivered 5m at 2.68g/t gold from 55m, including 1m running 10.33g/t gold and 8m at 1.63g/t gold from 80m, including 1m running 6.06g/t gold.

The top hit extends the gold mineralised body up-dip to within 21m of the base of 10m thick transported sand cover, about 200m south of the Turnberry pit design.

The stage one Turnberry Central pit was optimised at what now looks like a very conservative gold price of $2350 per ounce, against today’s $5074 per ounce gold price.

Meeka Metals managing director Tim Davidson said: “It is apparent from the broad zones of shallow high-grade gold in this drilling, in addition to the thick, high-grade gold in drilling results released through the first half of 2025, that we have far more oxide gold than contemplated in the DFS. It highlights the opportunity to organically grow the production plan.” 

Davidson said Meeka has two open pit mines operating at steady state at St Anne’s North and Turnberry Central, where ore is being stockpiled ahead of its processing plant being commissioned in June.

A wider 17m intercept going 1.2g/t gold in a previous hole sits about 17.3m below the top hit. It includes a 1m hit at a creditable 7.87g/t gold.

Further down-dip continuity potential is supported by a 9m intercept assaying 2.87g/t gold, including 4m at 5.29g/t gold, centred about 30m below this 17m intercept.

The new hits, including similar up-dip extensions indicated by recent hits on another section only 20m further south, have prompted the company to look at extending the Turnberry Central stage one open pit southwards. This would add shallow high-grade oxide ounces to the production plan.

Meeka will finalise its plant upgrade and refurbishment works in June and set up for underground mining at the company’s high-grade Andy Well underground mine. 

Meeka’s dance card is filling up fast as its myriad activities come together over the next month, in the lead-up to process plant commissioning aimed at kicking off gold production near the end of the year.

The latest results offer the company plenty of encouragement that it can maintain momentum at its Murchison project. 

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