In what was the first drilling undertaken in the pit since production ceased, the results confirm the presence of additional high-grade spur veins consistent with Eaglehawk Reef mineralisation and ideally located adjacent to existing decline infrastructure.
It neatly sets up a follow-up drilling campaign once the company has rehabilitated the decline to establish an underground exploration platform.
Kaiser plans for the underground platform to provide access to the north of the prospective area as it makes for more cost-effective drilling to test the potential of greater mineralisation at depth.
Kaiser Reef managing director Brad Valiukas said: “This recently completed drilling at Union Hill tested a shallow gap zone between known workings, and these are great results in an area that was historically left behind. Without taking away from the bigger picture approach to the entire Maldon gold project, the next step at Union Hill will be to re-establish the underground as an exploration platform.”
Valiukas said Maldon represents a district-scale opportunity for the company, with numerous historical mines that remain substantially underexplored.
The Union Hill open pit at the Maldon project site includes multiple historical underground mines and comes replete with an operatable 200,000 tonne per annum processing plant at nearby Porcupine Flat.
Union Hill is fully permitted, presently on care and maintenance and contains a mineral resource of 186,000 ounces of gold grading at 4.4g/t.
The old open pit was mined by Triad Minerals between 1988 and 1992, producing about 50,000 ounces of gold from approximately one million tonnes of remnant oxide ore at an average grade of 1.8g/t.
Kaiser also confirmed grade continuity with two drillholes positioned near a previously reported mineralised intersection. Results of 8.2m at 3.23g/t and 6.9m going 2.44g/t demonstrate grade continuity within a shallow, south-plunging shoot consistent with historical mineralised trends within the Eaglehawk Reef.
The Eaglehawk Reef is a quartz vein structure with a regional westerly to sub-vertical dip. It exhibits strong vertical continuity, delineated to a depth of more than 400m from regional exploration. It has been subjected to localised faulting along its 2km strike length.
The reef typically comprises massive quartz core with hanging-wall and footwall spur veins. Mineralisation is primarily hosted within the array of western hanging-wall veins, associated with alteration and disseminated sulphides. Fine visible gold was observed in some hanging-wall veins.
Kaiser revealed last week it had turbocharged its processing capacity at the company’s Henty gold mine near Queenstown in western Tasmania, lifting throughput rates higher by 33 per cent, to a 400,000 tonne per annum annual run rate.
The trials completed at the facility demonstrate it could operate at a greater capacity than it has for the past 20 years, leading to a likely new benchmark for the plant and pointing to an increase in gold production at that project.
According to management, Henty’s large uptick in processing capacity has been achieved without major infrastructure changes, with expectations for additional enhancements to fine tune the processing circuit and yield further benefits.
Kaiser has also boosted its ore reserves at Henty by a significant 29 per cent to 199,000 ounces at 3.28 grams per tonne (g/t), locking in an expanded mine life well beyond six years.
The reserve boost was tabled in conjunction with a mineral resource upgrade of 4.11 million tonnes at 3.32 grams per tonne (g/t) for 438,000 ounces of high-grade gold from the Tassie underground operation.
The gold price may have taken a small step back the past week, however at prices north of US$4000 (A$6100) per ounce, it is still pumping along and providing Kaiser’s Tassie operation with plenty of cash flow that it can spend proving up Maldon as a district scale opportunity.
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