Pacgold drills into high-grade gold as SA heap leach fires up

Pacgold Limited has hit shallow, wide, high-grade gold in initial mineral resource drilling at its wholly owned White Dam project in South Australia, marking a key step towards improved open pit designs and resource upgrades.

The Vertigo open pit is one of three areas targeted for upgrade this year as part of the current reverse circulation (RC) drilling campaign. So far, the initial assays appear to be right on the money and in line with the current block model published as far back as 2020.

Once drilling at Vertigo is complete later in the week, both the company’s Hannaford and White Dam North resources will see the drill bit with additional infill RC drilling.

The RC drilling at Vertigo spanned a 500-metre strike length, targeting infill holes to upgrade the resource from inferred to indicated. Drilling kicked off in late November, with 123 holes for 8,003m already completed.

The Vertigo orebody is a strata-bound lens, 5 to 25 metres wide and dips shallowly to the southeast. Recent drilling has been aimed at testing the down-dip potential of the mineralisation.

Standout hits included a 4-metre section grading 2.9 grams per tonne (g/t) gold and 0.79 per cent copper from 56 metres, sitting within a wider intercept of 15 metres going 1.6g/t gold and 0.48 per cent copper from 56 metres.

Testing the lens at depth, another hole sliced through 15 metres grading 1.6g/t gold from 60 metres, extending the mineralisation another 60m below the pit floor and remaining open at depth.

The under-drilled nature of Vertigo was further highlighted with a hefty 14- metre run grading 0.7g/t gold from surface. This newly identified outcropping intersection on the upper north-western edge of the Vertigo pit was not previously defined and supports the potential for a cutback of the historic open pit.

Currently, we are looking to firm up potential shallow, low-cost, and easily accessible ore. By bringing this ore forward in our mine optimisation and schedules, we can help reduce early working capital requirements while we strip back the main pits at Vertigo and Hannaford to access these primary orebodies.

Boyes said once each pit has been drilled out, new resource models and pit optimisation studies will be completed, with the company targeting early September to finalise the work. It will then move ahead with permit submissions to mine White Dam North and expand the existing Hannaford and Vertigo pit operations.

Work on restarting production at White Dam has meanwhile rapidly progressed. With the pad now under irrigation and the re-crush of the final lift set to begin this quarter, the company expects to achieve first gold in the coming months.

The project sits 80 kilometres west of Broken Hill in the Curnamona Province and encompasses 877 square kilometres of mining lease and exploration tenure.

The proven heap-leach operation includes a recently re-lined pond and heap-leach pad, a fully operational gold extraction plant and two previously mined open-pit mines. Infrastructure, including haul roads, water sources, generators and a well-established mining camp, is already in place.

Between 2010 and 2018, the mine produced 180,000 ounces of gold. White Dam currently hosts a 4.6-million-tonne resource grading 0.7g/t gold for 102,000 ounces, excluding gold still sitting on the heap leach pads.

PacGold plans to re-crush a significant portion of the remaining material on the leach pad, with up to 750,000 tonnes available for processing beyond the initial 250,000-tonne campaign.

With drilling, modelling and mine planning all converging this year, Pacgold appears to be quietly lining up the building blocks for a restart at White Dam.

If the next round of drilling continues to firm up shallow, mineable ounces, the former producer could also soon boost its resource as it polishes up the historic mine for a second crack at gold production.

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