Maritana Minerals has wasted little time following up on recent strong first-pass results from its phase one campaign at its Burbanks gold project, 9km southwest of Coolgardie in WA, and has launched a phase two drilling program and mobilised a second drill to accelerate its hunt for more ounces.
The new program is targeting depth extensions to the Burbanks Main and adjacent Birthday Gift lodes and will probe below the current inferred resource from 250m down to as deep as 450m from surface.
The goal of the program is to improve geological confidence, extend known mineralisation and to de-risk future underground development and ore delivery to the company’s developing Black Swan processing hub. The hub is 40km northeast of Kalgoorlie, or a straight-line 77km from Burbanks.
The company says access to neighbouring ground was a key enabler for the deeper program, allowing better drill positioning to target parts of the steeply dipping orebody.
The new drilling push will build on results from the phase one diamond drilling campaign, released earlier this month, which delivered a string of eye-catching hits, including 4.2m at 42.43 grams per tonne (g/t) gold from 289.63m depth, including 1.37m at 126.93g/t gold.
The same hole also gave up a separate hit of 0.3m at 54.02g/t and 1.81m at 13.82g/t from 207.41m depth.
Those sorts of results add support to the continuity and grade of the Burbanks system and have prompted the deeper follow-up work now in progress.
Maritana Minerals managing director and chief executive officer Grant Haywood commented: “Maritana’s Phase 1 drilling at the Burbanks Gold Project has reaffirmed the high-grade nature of the mineralised system and increased our geological confidence in the deposit. Our Phase 2 program is the next step to accelerating our exploration and development strategy for the Project, improving our current mine plan to feed the Black Swan Processing Hub.”
In parallel, Maritana has begun fresh work in the Burbanks South area, where early drilling picked up shearing and quartz-veining linked to shallow high-grade gold targets. The company is currently planning follow-up reverse circulation (RC) drilling to explore strike extensions and is also undertaking geological modelling to refine targets.
Burbanks already comes with strong historical credentials, including production of 324,000 ounces of gold at a healthy average of 22.7g/t gold from previous underground mining.
That number is consistent with and supports the project’s current and separate JORC-compliant mineral resource of 6.1 million tonnes at 2.4g/t gold for 466,000 ounces.
Notably, the underground upside has not been included in the Black Swan scoping study, leaving plenty of room for additional growth beyond the current life-of-mine plan.
Against its Burbanks backdrop, with all assays from Burbanks North now in hand, Maritana expects to deliver an updated mineral resource estimate for the project in mid-2026, before moving on to ore reserve studies.
If the current phase two drilling keeps the high-grade hits and solid intercepts coming, Maritana could see Burbanks becoming a meaningful contributor to the company’s broader WA gold strategy, which is strongly centred around its developing Black Swan processing hub.
With the intrigue from its previous round of phase one diamond drill hits still fresh in mind, including the 1.37m going more than four ounces of gold to the tonne in the old parlance, keen eyes will be looking out for fresh assays from phase two, with two rigs on the go and the story still building nicely.
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By Doug Bright
