South American focused gold miner, Troy Resources has the drill rods turning again at the Smarts underground area of its Karouni gold project in Guyana. Three more diamond drill holes are planned beneath the existing Smarts open pit where it previously drilled a bevy of high-grade gold hits with long intervals grading as high as half an ounce to the tonne.
The ASX-listed gold miner will be hoping to continue its stellar run of recent drill results from the five diamond drill holes already completed at Smarts, including one 2m hit going an ounce to the tonne gold from 175m down hole.
Other lengthy high-grade gold hits at the underground deposit included 8m at 15.5 g/t gold, 11m at 12.4 g/t gold and 19m at 9.15 g/t gold. Troy said some of the best intercepts were below 200m down hole, including one hole that returned 12m at 5.1 g/t gold from 208m and 10m at 5.99 g/t gold from 249m down hole.
Whilst the 2m hit at 175m was the richest, going 31.38 g/t gold, Troy said the deepest hit to date was a solid 10m at 10.69 g/t gold below 384m down hole.
Importantly for the Ken Nilsson-led Troy, once completed, this latest three-hole infill drill program will lead to the calculation of an upgraded mineral resource estimate beneath the historical Smarts open pits that is due to hit the streets before the end of this year.
The company said it had previously delineated a total mineral resource of 3 million tonnes at 3g/t gold, using a 1g/t cut-off grade, for approximately 290,000 ounces beneath the Smarts Pits.
Troy currently operates an open pit mine at Karouni where it has produced over 13,000 ounces of gold since mining re-commenced in January this year.
Company management said the Smarts Underground has the potential to materially improve the production and cost profile at the Karouni project given the high-grade nature of the ore which remains open at depth and along strike to the northwest.
The company is also planning near-term drilling programs to upgrade resources to reserves by testing target extensions to Smarts, infill drilling at the Goldstar prospect and RC drill testing of its Ohio Creek East soil geochemical target.
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By Matt Birney
