ASX-listed explorer, Kingwest Resources, is moving quickly to create a mineable gold deposit near Menzies in WA after the company said this week it has lifted the total mineral resource at its historic Menzies gold project about 130km north of Kalgoorlie by an impressive 37 per cent.
The total resource at Menzies now stands at 4.78 million tonnes going a solid 2.08 g/t for 319,900 ounces of contained gold, with much of it near surface.
The new resource estimate comes courtesy of an update to the estimate for the Lady Shenton deposit and the unveiling of a maiden resource estimate for the Stirling deposit.
The Perth-based company has wasted little time in bolstering its Menzies resource position through fresh drilling and re-evaluation of old data since acquiring the project about 10 months ago. It has now increased the overall inferred and indicated resource at the project by 37 per cent since March 2020 and 87 per cent since September 2019.
Menzies hosts a series of deposits within a contiguous tenements package and Kingwest says the targets left behind by previous operators are a geological continuation of, or in close proximity to historic open pit mines.
Modern exploration at Menzies has been limited over the past couple of decades since gold mining was last undertaken there and the company is now searching for repeats of and extensions to previously mined deposits such as Lady Shenton, which produced 30,300 ounces of gold from 349,000 tonnes of ore going 2.7 grams per tonne in the second half of the 1990s.
Following new drilling by Kingwest and a re-evaluation of historical drilling, the increased resource estimates have been prepared assuming run-of-the-mill open-pit mining and conventional CIL/CIP processing.
Lady Shenton’s inferred resource has been increased to 791,000 tonnes grading 2.55 g/t for 64,700 ounces of contained gold and Stirling’s maiden resource figure has come in at 313,000t going 2.17 g/t for 21,900 ounces.
The lode-style mineralisation found throughout the Menzies project is well represented around the historic Lady Shenton workings, where Kingwest says it also extends at depth.
The company considers the Lady Shenton, Stirling and Pericles deposits to be one decent sized mineralised system and is now working on that geological theory. The combined lode system resource incorporating those three deposits now stands at 166,100 ounces of contained gold.
Kingwest Chief Executive, Ed Turner said: “We are very pleased to continue to increase our near-surface gold resources at Menzies whilst at the same time we explore for higher-grade resources at depth, along strike from and between these near-surface deposits.”
“We are now in a position to advance towards scoping studies in the second half of 2020 … and investigate the best pathway towards economic production of these deposits.”
The company’s Menzies project area covers a mineralised corridor hosted along the Menzies shear zone over a strike length of about 15km and takes in all the high-grade gold deposits that have been historically mined and which, according to Kingwest, still provide significant exploration potential for high-grade extensions.
All the Menzies deposits lie within granted mining leases and the project is very well situated in terms of infrastructure and possible toll treatment options. Pit optimisation and scoping studies are under way now and more drilling aimed at boosting the resource size and confidence levels is planned for this year.
At face value Menzies looks to have plenty of opportunity to tease out additional near surface resources and there is also a deeper high-grade story developing.
The market warmed to Kingwest’s resource uplift, pushing its shares up by as much as 20 per cent at one stage during trading today.
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By Matt Birney
