Okapi starts diamond drilling for NSW gold

ASX-listed Okapi Resources has hit the go button on an 11-hole, 1800m diamond drilling campaign at its Sunnyside prospect, part of the larger Enmore gold project in northern NSW. The work is aimed at following up on a suite of “exceptional” hits scored in a maiden drilling campaign at the project late last year.

The company has its foot on a high priority target at Sunnyside that previously coughed up a number of solid results including 174m at 1.83 grams per tonne gold with the final 3m section at 8.86 g/t gold. Remarkably, the 3m interval contained an even higher-grade 1m component going 15.15 g/t gold from 172m.

Okapi says earlier drilling at the prospect led to the belief the ground’s mineralisation was plunging to the east, beside the Sunnyside fault. The mineralisation struck in previous exploits has reinforced its theory.

The in-progress campaign will aim to dive deeper into the zone and assess its mineralisation along strike and downdip whilst also drilling below existing near-surface oxide mineralisation.

The company says the prospect’s gold mineralisation stretches across more than 400m of strike and, in what also may bode well for the campaign, remains open at depth and along strike.

According to Okapi, the campaign at Sunnyside could shore up the larger project's structural and lithological information and will enable it to get a comprehensive understanding of the prospect’s mineralisation controls.

The miner believes its strategy could bolster future drill campaigns by developing a clearer picture of where the mineral-laden pockets are.

The program at Enmore will also test another of the venture’s more promising prospects, Sherwood. According to Okapi, historical work at Sherwood has delivered a number of notable intercepts with grades as high as 56.6 g/t from shallow depths of about 60m.

Management says work could be wrapped up as early as August this year.

The company’s Enmore operation stretches across more than 100 square kilometres along the New England Fold Belt, about 30km south of the regional centre of Armidale in NSW.

Management believes Enmore shares geological similarities to the revered Hillgrove gold mine, about 20km’s north. Interestingly, previous work at Hillgrove delivered past production figures of more than 730,000 ounces of gold.

It says previous drilling at the project has been centred around shallow drilling campaigns and the majority of its targets have yet to be tested at significant depths.

Okapi’s multi-commodity portfolio takes in a number of rapidly advancing uranium ventures in North America along with its precious metal operation in NSW.

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