Investors back Great Southern drilling blitz at Laverton

ASX-listed gold explorer, Great Southern Mining, has been swamped by investors who have piled into its $3.12 million capital raise. Funding from the oversubscribed share placement will go towards jump-starting an aggressive drilling campaign the company has mapped out for its Cox’s Find and Mon Ami gold projects near Laverton in WA.

Great Southern’s capital structure will be expanded to 454 million shares after the 39 million shares issued in the latest placement are factored in. The Perth-based company is planning to launch fresh rounds of RC drilling next month to follow up on recent high-grade gold drill results from both projects, which are about 80km apart. It has completed approximately 9,000m and 3,000m of drilling at Cox’s Find and Mon Ami this year, respectively.

Among a horde of bonanza gold hits at both projects, Cox’s Find returned a spectacular intercept of 5.65m going 80 grams per tonne gold from 160m including 1.1m at 404 g/t, or 13 ounces to the tonne, from 164.6m, while Mon Ami’s notable intersections included 11m grading 7.9 g/t gold from 26m including 4m at 15.9 g/t.

Great Southern Chief Executive Officer, Sean Gregory said: “The 2020 drilling programs at Cox’s Find and Mon Ami have delivered the company some excellent outcomes. The additional and highly prospective regional tenure we have acquired during the last six months has also seen Great Southern establish what is now a substantial landholding within the Duketon Belt, with some of the dominant regional mineralised structures running right through our tenements. Drilling at these two projects is set to commence shortly. We expect a strong flow of results from these programs over the coming months.”

The gold hopeful last week told the market it was also investigating the potential to transition to gold production, perhaps as early as next year, via fast-tracking a low-CAPEX, open-pit development of Mon Ami 12km south-east of Laverton based on an open-cut mining and contract milling operation scenario.

Mon Ami hosts an inferred resource of 1.1 million tonnes at 1.7 g/t gold for 59,000 ounces of contained gold. The company hopes that next month’s drilling will lead to an upgrade in the classification of the resource to the indicated category as well as possibly increasing the size of it.

The new drilling at Mon Ami is set to piggyback off the approximate 4,000m RC program at Cox’s Find.

Great Southern points out there are a bevy of processing plants within 150km of Mon Ami that may present toll-treatment possibilities, including Gold Fields’ Granny Smith mill about 14km to the south.

If it can square away the requisite development-related pre-mining approvals activities and studies over the coming weeks and months, Great Southern says it will be in a position to approach owners of nearby gold processing plants and enter into toll-treatment contract discussions armed with a “shovel ready” project.

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