In what is looking like an industry trend now, Horizon Minerals has uncovered some strong gold intercepts amongst historical drilling data and mine design records at its Rose Hill gold project, 45km west of the proposed Boorara mill near Kalgoorlie.
The company said its current mineral resource estimate at Rose Hill stands at 1.2Mt grading 2.49g/t gold for 95,000 ounces to 300m depth with a cut-off of 0.7g/t.
The additional data points to the confirmation of high-grade gold mineralisation, with both open pit and underground mining potential, to over 500m vertical depth, according to management.
Horizon said that a number of strong, historic, true width drill intercepts that were discovered support open pit mining include 17m at 3.08g/t gold from 0m, 4m at 11.07g/t gold from 8m and 10m at 6.28g/t gold from 28m.
Other true width intercepts that Horizon said may support underground mining include 20m going 8.94g/t gold from 77m and 3.5m at 10.52g/t from 170.5m. Two deeper hits returned 5m at 5.93g/t gold from 289.5m and 3m at 9.25g/t gold from 407m.
Horizon said it was planning to integrate all the historical data into an updated geological model with new open pit and underground resource estimates expected by the middle of this year.
Horizon Minerals’ Managing Director, Jon Price said: “Horizon has now received additional drilling data and mining information from Rose Hill and we have certainly found some hidden gems. The high-grade open cut and underground potential is clearly demonstrated with more work already completed than first thought saving the Company time and money.”
“We now look forward to incorporating the data into a new resource model and updating the open pit and underground mine designs with up to date operational and economic parameters for inclusion into the reserve generation work and Feasibility Study.”
Rose Hill joins Binduli, Teal and the base load Boorara deposits as the core development projects to be assessed by the feasibility study due to be completed in December 2020.
Whilst already in sight of the super pit at Kalgoorlie, Horizon also appears to be in sight of the finish line in terms of turning these deposits into a mine. Any potential upgrades to the resource at Rose Hill will only help it over that line.
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