Strickland hikes Yandal gold ounces 56 per cent near Wiluna

Strickland Metals has added 143,400 ounces of gold to the combined mineral resource for its Horse Well camp in WA, boosting the prospect’s resource to 4.68 million tonnes at a respectable 1.94 grams per tonne for 291,500 ounces.

Combined with the 108,900 ounce Dusk ‘til Dawn deposit, the update lifts the total Yandal project inferred resource to an imposing 8.17 million tonnes at 1.52 g/t gold tonne for 400,400 ounces of gold. 

The Dusk ‘til Dawn deposit sits about 16km north of and outside Strickland’s Horse Well gold camp and its resource is attributed to the greater Yandal project area, about 85km northeast of Wiluna in Western Australia.

The positive revision represents a 56 per cent increase in the company’s previous mineral resource estimate of 257,000 ounces for the Yandal project back in 2019 and is accompanied by an 8.6 per cent grade increase from 1.4g/t to 1.52g/t gold. 

The latest mineral resource estimate is constrained within optimised pit shells based on a gold price of A$4000 per ounce.

This means that additional mineralisation currently outside those shells potentially remains available for inclusion in future resource upgrades after further infill and extensional drilling, revised interpretations and models or further gold price improvements. 

Notably all of the principal deposits at the project feature open mineralisation, a reference to potential resource material that can be inferred beyond the limits of existing drill holes which end in mineralisation.

Some of those open holes also exhibit high-grade intercepts at or close to their deepest extents.

The Horse Well camp includes the Palomino-Filly-Filly SW, Warmblood and Bronco deposits and is part of Strickland’s greater Yandal project, 85km northeast of Wiluna in Western Australia’s Eastern Goldfields, within the Yandal/Millrose Greenstone Belt. 

Importantly, a significant amount of previous drilling at the project, much of which was undertaken last year, also intersected strong gold mineralisation, most notably at the Marwari and Konik prospects, neither of which form part of the updated resource estimate.

Strickland says both of those prospects only require a small amount of infill drilling to bring the resources into the inferred resource classification.

The Warmblood pit optimisation is confined within the present extent of drilling, suggesting that further extensional drilling could potentially lift the resource and its classification.

Strickland Metals Managing Director, Paul L'Herpiniere, said: "The current total Yandal Project Mineral Resource Estimate is now larger than the ~346,000oz Au Millrose deposit sold to Northern Star in 2023 for $61 million, and the gold price has almost doubled since that time as well. All of the defined resources remain open along strike and at depth, with unclassified mineralisation situated outside of the MRE pit constraints.”

Much of last year’s drilling was focussed on extending oxide and transitional mineralisation beyond historic resource estimates and was focussed mainly on defining higher-grade plunging shoots which could point to underground potential to be followed up in future drill campaigns. 

As a result, less drilling was conducted internally within the potential resource areas at the time. 

Some drilling was not accompanied by modern data QAQC, and while drill hole density might be deemed adequate for indicated resource classifications, the mineral resource estimates currently remain in inferred categories until further data refinement.

Strickland’s Yandal gold project encloses about 70km of strike along the prospective greenstone terrane of the Celia Shear Zone and it sits alongside Northern Star’s Yandal operations which include that company’s mega 10 million ounce Jundee gold mine. 

Less than 10km of that 70km strike has been explored in any serious measure and only about 26 per cent of exploration drilling has probed deeper than 100m vertical depth.

After the company’s sale of its Millrose deposit to Northern Star for about $61 million in 2023, the Horse Well gold camp became its key exploration focus at Yandal through last year. 

Strickland has now transformed Horse Well from just “a high-grade interconnected mineral system”, by expanding the 257,000 ounce footprint of the pre-existing resource to more than 3km of strike.

In doing so, it has also identified a number of high-grade components and trends in each deposit and demonstrated that all of its current deposits are open along strike and at depth.

Strickland is now primarily focussed on depth extensions at its Palomino and Warmblood Deposits, where pit optimisations are constrained by drilling depth and extent, with high-grade mineralisation present at or near the floor of the current optimized pit shells remaining open at depth and down plunge. 

The company also intends to drill along the 1.6km-long Marwari trend, to bring its current high-grade unclassified mineralisation at the Marwari and Filly North prospects into future resource categories. 

Additionally, well-defined gold trends identified by earlier scout air core drilling remain open along strike to the north where they trend undercover. These include the 3km-long Bronco-Konik trend and the 1.6km-long Marwari trend.

While the current mineral resource estimate extends over a combined 2.3km of strike, more than 10km of the mineralised strike along defined gold trends has yet to be tested more comprehensively by reverse circulation or diamond drilling, representing a serious and sustained future exploration path for the company at Horse Well.

Strickland remains exceptionally well-funded with $33.8 million in cash and Northern Star shares at the end of the December Quarter which means if there is another Jundee lurking out there somewhere, chances are Strickland will find it. 

Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au