Kingwest Resources has topped up its shallow mineral resource estimate at its Menzies project to 233,336 ounces of gold and now has over 258,000oz of shallow contained gold across the greater Menzies-Goongarrie gold project, up from 171,000 ounces that was booked back in December.
The company said drilling is continuing at other deposits within the project that do not have near-surface resources, such as the Lady Shenton and First Hit deposits.
Kingwest said it had updated the mineral resource estimates at its Lady Harriet-Bellenger-Warrior deposit and reported a maiden resource for its Selkirk prospect, all within the broader Menzies gold project. The Lady Harriet-Bellenger-Warrior resource volume has increased by 35 per cent from an earlier estimate back in 2016.
The total indicated and inferred resource for Lady Harriet-Bellenger now stands at 475,000 tonnes at 1.9g/t gold for 28,900 contained ounces. The Warrior prospect has an inferred resource of 127kt at 2.3g/t gold for 9,300 contained ounces and the Selkirk prospect has an inferred resource of 87kt at 4.5g/t gold for 12,600 contained ounces. All resource estimates were quoted based on a 1.0g/t cut-off.
The company said its Lady Harriet and Bellenger resources were from near surface to 120m below surface and have the potential to be exploited by open pit mining. Its Selkirk and Lady Harriet deposits extend below previously mined, shallow open pits that may be mineable via open pit cutbacks.
The total mineral resource for the Menzies project is now 3.67Mt grading 1.9g/t gold for 233,300oz contained gold and Goongarrie is showing 270,000 tonnes at 2.86g/t gold for 25,028 contained ounces.
Kingwest CEO, Ed Turner said: “We are very pleased to continue to continue to increase our near surface gold resources whilst at the same time we target deeper higher-grade resources. We are investigating profit share arrangements with third parties to potentially mine these shallow resources while we focus on the higher-grade deeper targets.”
A quarter of a million ounces of contained near-surface mineral resources is a good start and grades look to be holding up well at this stage, across both project areas.
Being able to dig paydirt pretty much from surface also avoids massive pre-strip costs and is a real bonus for this rapidly advancing open pitable story.
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