ASX-listed gold explorer, Kingwest Resources, has the drill rods spinning again at its flagship Menzies gold project about 130km north of Kalgoorlie as it looks to accelerate exploration programs, mineral resource estimates and scoping studies towards a potential revival of the historic project.
The Perth-based company intends drilling its Menzies gold mineralised systems at a closer spacing in order to lift the confidence level of the existing global resource inventory – based on several satellite deposits – with a view to converting most of the inferred category to indicated and or measured resources.
Kingwest’s new resource definition drilling blitz of 100 holes totalling 10,000m is also aimed at delineating additional resources at the First Hit, Lady Shenton, Lady Harriet and Yunndaga satellite deposits.
A further 30 RC holes totalling 3,000m in brownfields exploration drilling will be targeting extensions to known high-grade deposits including First Hit as well as other nearby prospects.
In less than a year since picking up the project, the company has significantly increased the overall inferred and indicated near-surface resource at Menzies – by 87 per cent – to 4.78 million tonnes going a respectable 2.08 grams per tonne for 319,900 ounces of contained gold.
The project area covers a mineralised corridor along the Menzies shear zone over a strike length of about 15km and takes in all the former high-grade gold deposits that have been historically mined.
According to Kingwest, gold targets that previous operators have left behind are a geological continuation of, or in close proximity to, the historic open-pit mines.
Modern exploration at Menzies has been limited over the past couple of decades since gold mining was last undertaken there. The company is now endeavouring to tease out extensions to, and repeats of, the previously mined deposits.
Menzies produced 145,000oz of gold from ore grading 2.6 g/t between 1995 and 1999 and 643,200oz of recorded historical underground gold production from ore that graded a whopping 22.5 g/t between 1895 and 1943.
All Kingwest’s gold deposits at Menzies sit within a contiguous tenements package and granted mining leases. The company says the region is very well serviced by infrastructure and surrounding treatment plants.
The gold hopeful is in the process of raising $3.3 million before costs in a non-renounceable rights issue to eligible shareholders. It will have more than $6 million cash in the bank after the raise which the company says will help facilitate the fast-tracking of exploration at Menzies to grow the 320,000oz resource.
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By Matt Birney
