Horizon Minerals has bumped up its resource estimate for the company’s 100 per cent-owned Penny’s Find gold mine project by nearly 50 per cent to 63,000 ounces having sunk 8,085m of resource drilling into the project since the previous resource estimate in 2022.
Located 50km north-east of Kalgoorlie, in the Eastern Goldfields of Western Australia, the latest underground resource estimate is based on a compilation of all drilling results below the 260m RL – or relative level - and a lower cut-off grade of 1.5g/t gold, yielding a total resource estimate of 429,000 tonnes at a grade of 4.57g/t gold for a total of 63,000 ounces contained gold.
Horizon Minerals chief executive officer Grant Haywood said: “It is pleasing to see the Resource growth at Penny's Find on the back of the 2023 drill programs, including extensions at depth and to the north of the existing resource, which remain open. We look forward to completing the underground mining study and economic review in the June 2024 quarter for a development decision to be made shortly thereafter.”
Originally acquired as a 50 per cent interest back in 2020 in partnership with Labyrinth Resources, named Orminex at the time, the company took full ownership of the project in December 2021, seeing it as an early underground development and production opportunity to generate cash via a toll milling and underground contractor arrangement.
The 8,085m drilled since includes an eight-hole RC and diamond tails program for 2,550m early this year, and a further four RC holes for 906m in the third quarter of the year, primarily with the aim of expanding and infilling the resource at depth and lifting some of the previously inferred resource category material into the indicated resource category.
Management says the drilling intersected new mineralisation to the north, while the deposit remains open at depth and will be further assessed from underground drilling positions.
The company says the Pennys Find high-grade gold mineralisation is hosted by thin quartz veins at the contact between the hanging-wall basalt and footwall sediments, which include black shale and siltstone, with the quartz veins dipping at about 60 degrees to the north-east and averaging between one to five metres in thick true thickness.
Significantly, the latest resource estimate includes a far greater proportion listed under the higher confidence indicated category with 305,000 tonnes going 5.19g/t gold for 51,000 ounces gold contained.
In addition, the inferred resource now stands at 123,000 tonnes running 3.02g/t gold for 12,000 ounces.
Horizon now says it will undertake an underground operations feasibility study and expects to deliver a maiden ore reserve for Pennys Find in the coming June quarter, adding that the mine is already permitted for development via a previously approved mining proposal and project management plan.
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By Doug Bright
