ASX-listed gold hopeful, Kingwest Resources, has offloaded a couple of non-core assets that are not part of its flagship Menzies gold project, pocketing just over $2 million which it intends to sink into exploration and development drilling work at Menzies. Kingwest’s Menzies project involves a plethora of old gold projects that are littered across about 10km of strike.
The Perth-based gold explorer last month delivered a 37 per cent increase in the project’s near-surface combined mineral resource, which now stands at 4.78 million tonnes going a solid 2.08 grams per tonne for 319,900 ounces of contained gold – courtesy of a lift in the resource estimate for the Lady Shenton deposit to 791,000 tonnes grading 2.55 g/t for 64,700oz of contained gold and the Stirling deposit’s maiden resource of 313,000t at 2.17 g/t for 21,900oz.
One of the assets Kingwest has let go that was sold to Resource Mining Pty Ltd for $1.9 million plus a small royalty is the Goongarrie Lady deposit, 40km south of Menzies. It hosts a modest 25,000 ounces of gold and covers only about 1.5 per cent of its second-string Goongarrie project ground holdings.
Kingwest has almost doubled the Menzies resource inventory via new drilling and a re-evaluation of historic drilling data since acquiring the project about 11 months ago.
Hosted along the Menzies shear zone, the project area takes in a series of deposits within a contiguous tenement package that boasts a strike length of some 15km. Between 1995 and 1999, Menzies produced around 145,000oz of gold from open pit ore grading 2.6 g/t.
Modern exploration has been sparse there ever since and, according to the company, structurally controlled historically mined high-grade gold deposits within the Menzies project area display extensive upside potential for high-grade extensions.
Optimisation studies of all Menzies’ deposits are underway now with a view to assessing the economic viability of each deposit. Continued infill drilling designed to further increase the global resource and geological confidence levels will lead into scoping studies, which are earmarked to be completed in the second half of calendar year 2020.
All Kingwest’s Menzies deposits lie within granted mining leases and the project is very well situated in terms of infrastructure and possible toll treatment options. Kingwest looks to have plenty of prospectivity to work with on its tenure and a good chance of adding to its open-pittable resource position, not to mention the deeper high-grade drilling targets at Menzies.
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By Matt Birney
