Spectrum Metals’ Phase II drilling program at the Penny West project near Youanmi, WA, continues to bear fruit with the latest batch of results from the Penny North discovery showing high-grade gold assays.
The current work is targeting mineralisation down-dip and down-plunge to the south at Penny North, which is a similar high-grade shoot direction to that beneath the historical Penny West open pit operation.
Significant new results include 9 metres grading 6.9g/t gold from 200m down-hole that incorporates a higher-grade section of 5m @ 13.3g/t gold from 202m.
Other encouraging assays returned were 7m @ 4.9g/t gold from 225m down-hole, including a metre at 24g/t from 231m and 3m @ 15g/t gold from 239m down-hole, in the same drill hole.
Assay results are currently pending for a further eight deep RC drill holes, with 11 further holes planned and not yet completed.
Abundant showings of coarse gold have been pan-concentrated from the program, which has allowed Spectrum to tweak its drilling program “on the fly” and design extensional holes as required, without the time delay of awaiting assay results from the laboratory.
The company said it was encouraged by the presence of the lead sulphide mineral “galena” present in the pan-concentrates, which was associated with gold mineralisation within the Penny West open cut.
To supplement this work, Spectrum has also completed sighter metallurgical test work investigations of the Penny North ores and determined exceptional recoveries of up to 99.2% from a conventional flowsheet design.
Up to 77% of the gold mineralisation was reported as being gravity recoverable in the preliminary studies.
While this is not unexpected and in-line with historical gold recoveries from the Penny West operation in the early 1990s, the results are very encouraging, with free-milling gold present and hence, the ores appear amenable to a conventional crush-grind-gravity-leach flowsheet design.
The gold system at the combined Penny West – Penny North deposits has now been defined over 650 metres of strike length, to a vertical depth of 230m and is open in all directions, according to management.
The new deep high-grade gold results and positive preliminary metallurgical studies for the Penny North ores continue to validate Spectrum’s decision to purchase the Penny West mining leases last October.
Penny West is situated about 25km south from the Youanmi mining centre in the strongly endowed Murchison district of Western Australia
The open cut mining operation produced 85,000 ounces of gold from 121,000 tonnes at a grade of 21.8g/t gold during 1991 and 1992 at a time when the gold price was about a fifth of what it is today.
Penny West currently has a JORC-compliant mineral resource estimate of 230,000 tonnes grading 4.8g/t gold for 36,000 ounces below the historical pit shell.
Given the numerous high-grade intercepts returned from the drilling at Penny North since its discovery in March, Spectrum could well be looking at a sizeable upgrade to this resource reasonably soon.
By Matt Birney
