Middle Island Resources has the wind at its back and prolific investor, Stephen Copulos by its side, as the company launches into a 20,000m drilling blitz across the Sandstone Gold project in WA. The first phase of this program involves 13,000 metres of RC drilling across 14 prospective looking “open pit” gold targets that according to Middle Island, have the potential to lift existing mineral resources ahead of another update to the project’s pre-feasibility study.
2,000 metres of aircore has already been completed across two laterite gold targets and existing geochemical gold anomalies. Maiden air core drilling was also carried out over one new gold target.
Middle Island said it hopes to receive results from the aircore drilling as the RC rig progressively cycles through its long list of open-pit gold targets.
Any positive results from the aircore drilling can then be followed up with the RC rig.
An allowance in Middle Island’s strategy for infill drilling will serve to take any inferred mineral resources to indicated status, which then allows for their assessment as potential reserves in the impending pre-feasibility study.
Middle Island’s flagship deposit, Two Mile Hill, is also set to receive some love, with plans to explore adjacent to the existing resource that is hosted in a tonalite, where gold is dominantly located.
Previous drilling has defined gold mineralisation outside of the tonalite, however at this stage, it is not fully understood. The drilling has however, provided a few surprises, with previous results such as 35 metres grading 6.27 grams per tonne.
The upcoming drilling at Two Mile Hill is planned to confirm the nature and the orientation of these lodes, which is believed by Middle Island to be hosted in a basalt.
The company has also previously tabled highly anomalous shallow gold results from weathered basalt in the footwall, or underneath the tonalite, with 93m grading 1.54g/t gold directly from surface and 9m grading 5.23g/t gold from 87m downhole.
Any mineralisation outside the tonalite, that can be defined from additional drilling, may have an impact on just how big the final open pit will be and any potential reserves that might feed it.
Two Mile Hill, which is 600km northeast of Perth, has a near-vertical gold mineralised tonalite system that spans about 250m by 90m and plunges to as-yet-unknown depths of least 700m.
Drilling into the Two Mile Hill tonalite has produced some staggering intercepts including 508.3m grading 1.38g/t from 83.7m downhole.
With a 600,000tpa CIP treatment plant already on-site and the ability to restart it at an estimated cost of just over $10 million, the latest drilling program just might be the catalyst needed to get the mill balls rolling again.
The drilling is also very timely with a bullish gold price hovering around AUD$2,348 per ounce this week.
Middle Island Managing Director, Rick Yeates said: “Commencing 2020 with ~A$2.8 million in cash (at bank or fully underwritten) provides a rare opportunity to realise a long-held ambition to deploy significant drilling metres across a multitude of open pit gold targets (and deposits) that have remained untested or poorly tested due to prior funding constraints.”
The meeting of minds between Middle Island management and renown mining investor, Stephen Copulos may turn out to be a lucrative one with Copulos not afraid to hit his kick to back the Perth based company’s strategy at Sandstone – a strategy that is littered with drill-ready targets that just need some money and resilience thrown at them…
...and perhaps even a little luck.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact : matt.birney@businessnews.com.au
By Matt Birney
