Augustus raises $2.5M for WA gold drilling

Augustus Minerals has topped up its war chest with a $2.5 million placement to fast-track a second round of drilling at its Music Well gold project near Leonora in WA, after a stunning maiden drill campaign recently hit wide zones of gold mineralisation.

The company says it received firm commitments from a suite of institutional, professional and sophisticated backers, with the issue price representing a slender 2.4 per cent discount to its last closing price – a solid vote of confidence from the market.

The raise follows hot on the heels of assay results from its first-ever drill program at the project’s Clifton East prospect that seem to have pricked up a few ears.

That maiden campaign, completed in March, returned a suite of encouraging hits from 4m composite samples, including a solid 16-metre intersection grading 1.46 grams per tonne (g/t) gold from just 28m downhole. That hit also contained a higher-grade 12-metre core going 1.91g/t gold.

Other notable results include 12m at 0.80g/t gold from 68m and a particularly wide 32m section grading 0.90g/t gold from 40m, which itself hosted a 4m intercept running a solid 2.72g/t gold.  

Impressively, that initial 11-hole, 1100m program tested only 350m of a much bigger 1.2-kilometre-long gold-in-soil anomaly at Clifton East, leaving plenty of blue sky for the company to pursue.  

With its saddlebags now full of cash, Augustus plans to waste no time putting the money to work. The company is planning an expedited 2300m stage-two drilling program at Clifton East, comprising 14 reverse-circulation (RC) holes and two diamond holes, slated to begin in early June.  

In addition, a 500m first-pass RC program will test the nearby St Patrick’s Well prospect for the first time. The company will also get boots on the ground to conduct soil and rock chip sampling programs to build its pipeline of drill-ready targets.  

The Music Well project covers a commanding 1242-square-kilometre patch of dirt in one of Australia’s most revered geological addresses. It sits just 35km north of Leonora in WA’s Eastern Goldfields, a region that has coughed up more than 130 million ounces of gold.  

The project is surrounded by a who’s who of the WA gold scene, with major operating mines including Northern Star’s Thunderbox and Darlot operations and Genesis Minerals’ Leonora gold camp practically on its doorstep.  

Geologically, management says the mineralisation at Clifton East shows strong similarities to the Golden Cities group of deposits, a 1.4-million-ounce system, 50km north of Kalgoorlie. Both are hosted in a specific type of mafic granite known as a “sanukitoid”, with geologists noting the presence of lamprophyre dykes at Music Well – often seen as important indicators of deep-tapping, gold-fertile structures.  

Augustus Minerals general manager exploration Andrew Ford said: "The maiden drilling program at Clifton East has delivered encouraging results from the initial 4m composite sampling. These early indications suggest the potential for a broader mineralised system, both at Clifton East and across the wider Music Well project, which hosts several undrilled targets supported by high-grade rock chip samples. The upcoming 1m assay results will be important in defining grade distribution and continuity."  

While the WA gold hunt will be the main game, the new funds will also be used to advance the company’s other projects, including an electromagnetic survey over four targets at its Ti-Tree project in the Gascoyne and fieldwork in Papua New Guinea at its Vanapa River and Mt Kare prospects. 

After hitting paydirt with its very first drill program at Music Well, it’s little wonder the market has backed Augustus to go again.

With a fresh $2.5 million in the bank and the drill rods set to start spinning again in just a few weeks at a prospect that already has runs on the board, there should be plenty of newsflow to watch out for as the company looks to build on its early success.

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