Diamond drilling yields high-grade NSW gold for Okapi

Okapi Resources has tabled a suite of high-grade assay results following a seven-hole, 1440m diamond drilling program at its Enmore gold project in NSW’s New England Fold Belt. The intersections were delivered courtesy of the campaign’s first two holes and include 4m at a solid 8.85 grams per tonne gold from 184m and follows a 2021 RC campaign that delivered a slew of compelling strikes.

The company says the duo of recently plunged diamond holes were aimed at evaluating the true width and depth extensions of high-grade gold mineralisation struck in the earlier RC program.

Management believes the new holes delivered in spades with the pair intersecting high-grade gold within a larger parcel of lower-grade mineralisation.

Some of the other notable hits from the first diamond hole include 8m grading 2.04 g/t gold from 204m and 4m running 4.56 g/t gold from a depth of 249m.

Significant assays from the second diamond bore include 9m at 1.27g/t gold from 107m and 15m grading 1.17g/t gold from 160m. Some of the longer intersections include 30m grading 0.96 g/t gold from 121m and 26m going 2.52 g/t gold from a depth of 182m.

After casting its eye over the new results management says the operation’s gold appears to grade higher with depth and believes more success could come with the drill bit along strike to the west – an area that has seen virtually no deep drilling.

Assay results from the remaining five holes are still pending.

Okapi Resources’ Managing Director, Andrew Ferrier said:“This is an excellent result, demonstrating the high-grade nature of the Enmore Gold Project. Both drillholes OKDD001 and OKDD002 show multiple high-grade zones within a broad halo of low-grade gold mineralisation. Mineralisation appears to be improving with depth and with virtually no deep drilling there is potential for the discovery of additional high-grade gold shoots along strike to the west.

Enmore is described by Okapi as vastly under-explored and prospective for economic occurrences of high-grade gold in deposits located across known prospects in addition to new mineralised areas.

The explorer says historic exploration at the project was largely centred around near surface gold despite a flurry of high-grade intercepts.

Previous operators plunged a collective sum of about 200 diamond, RC and percussion holes totalling around 11,300m across several of the site’s prospects between 1974 and 2016.

Notable historical drill hits include 4m grading 11.94 g/t gold from surface, 2m going 14.6 g/t from 46m, 8m at 3.0 g/t from surface, 20m running 1.7 g/t from 18m that includes 4m at 4.4 g/t.

Previous work also included 10m at 2.8 g/t from surface including 2m at 6.2 g/t.

Okapi says gold mineralisation at Enmore exists in an analogous geological setting to the historic Hillgrove gold-antimony mine about 35km away.

Previous production at Melbourne-based Red River Resources’ Hillgrove operation reached more than 730,000 ounces of gold in bullion and concentrates and more than 50,000 tonnes of antimony as metal and in concentrates – figures Okapi may be aspiring to as work at Enmore gathers steam.

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