ASX listed gold explorer Kairos Minerals has experienced its own “Eureka” moment in the Pilbara after the company stumbled across a bonanza patch of more than 250 gold nuggets at its Croydon Project in the north of Western Australia.
The company set out just weeks ago to get itself a slice of the Pilbara conglomerate gold market and at face value at least, it certainly seems to be onto something now at Croydon.
With the help of Pilbara conglomerate gold expert George Merhi, Kairos recovered 256 nuggets weighing over 8 ounces just weeks after starting its 2018 conglomerate exploration program.
The nuggets were recovered from an area adjacent to the unconformity between the basal Fortescue Group Mount Roe Basalt and older Archean basement where stream sediment sampling earlier this year returned up to 7 grams per tonne gold.
Kairos said preliminary metal detecting to date has only focused on an area smaller than 150m by 150m and with the nuggets displaying both flattened “watermelon seed” shapes with pitted textures and rounded edges with some being of irregular shape.
The company added that the conglomerate and sandstone outcrops another 400m to the south along strike from the recently identified nugget patch.
Kairos’ exploration campaign is focused on areas where prior field work identified previously unrecognised prospective conglomerate units that are up to 30m thick at four different locations, predominantly within the southern portion of the tenement package.
Additional mapping, stream sediment sampling and metal detecting is currently underway with a round of highly anticipated assay results from regional exploration work expected within the next three weeks.
The company will shift into high gear in the next three to four weeks with a solid program of costeaning, trenching and diamond drilling about to kick off in order to determine the overall dimensions of the conglomerate horizon.
Kairos Executive Chairman, Terry Topping, said: “While there are many questions still to be answered, the presence of such a significant accumulation of gold nuggets within the first area followed up from our regional stream sediment program, makes this project a priority exploration focus for us.”
“We anticipate having crews back in the field within a week to commence the next phase of exploration, which will include further sampling, metal detecting and trenching – ahead of a program of systematic RC/diamond drilling which we will commence early next quarter.”
The Croyden project is part of Kairos’ Pilbara Gold Project that covers 1158km2.
A field assessment has highlighted the presence of at least 100km’s of strike that is highly prospective for “Witwatersrand-style” conglomerate-hosted gold mineralisation.
South Africa’s Witwatersrand Basin has produced more than a third of the world’s gold from conglomerate style, nuggetty mineralisation.
The Pilbara project also hosts the Mt York, Iron Stirrup and Old Faithful deposits that collectively host a JORC mineral resource of 14.4 million tonnes grading 1.39 grams per tonne gold for 643,000 ounces of contained gold.
Most of this is located at Mt York, which has a contained resource of 486,000 ounces of gold and remains open both along strike and at depth.
Assays are pending for a 6,700 metre drilling program aimed at increasing resources and targeting higher grade mineralisation at depth that was completed during the June quarter.
Some of the deposits were mined between 1994 to 1998 by Lynas Gold NL. A total of 125,493oz of gold was recovered in the area from 2.114 million tonnes of ore with an average grade of 1.85g/t gold during this period.
According to the company, historical metallurgical test work and milling indicates that conventional gravity and CIP extraction resulted in gold recoveries of more than 90% at standard grind sizes.
On another front Kairos has also identified multiple drill ready targets at its Roe Hills gold-nickel-cobalt project in the Eastern Goldfields following a major re-interpretation of the geology, geophysics and geochemistry of the entire Roe Hills belt.
Final assays from drilling completed earlier this year confirmed widespread shallow gold mineralisation over multiple prospect areas over a 40km strike.
It also found extensions to previously identified gold mineralisation confirmed at Lingering Kiss, Terra and Caliburn.
Lingering Kiss is particularly interesting as it is interpreted to be the southern strike extension of Silver Lake Resources’ French Kiss deposit.
Recent drilling at Lingering Kiss intersected high-grade primary gold mineralisation with hits of up to 43.34g/t gold, confirming the main mineralised zone is at least 30m thick and extends over a strike length of at least 200m.
It is still early days for Kairos’ exploration program at Croydon, however the early discovery of gold nuggets is certainly encouraging and may give the ASX listed junior a chip on the conglomerate gold board.
Certainly worth watching.
