Kingwest Resources said its Pericles prospect has booked an 87% upgrade in total estimated resources to 79,500 ounces of contained gold which pushes the total nearer to surface resources at the Menzies Gold project to 208,300oz of gold. The indicated resource at Pericles now sits at 630,000 tonnes at 1.8g/t gold and the inferred resource is 780,000 tonnes grading 1.7g/t gold. The total combined resource at Pericles is now 1.4Mt with an average grade of 1.8g/t.
The Pericles upgrade takes the company’s total, near-surface indicated and inferred mineral resources for the Menzies Gold project north of Kalgoorlie to 3.29Mt at 2.0g/t for 208,300oz of contained gold. The company said that the Pericles resource is shallow and extends from surface to 120m below the surface.
Whilst Kingwest said it was maintaining its key focus on proving up high-grade gold mineralisation suitable for underground mining, the company will now study the potential exploitation of the nearer to surface resources via open pit mining. The management team is also assessing the potential of its other near-surface deposits to form near-term exploitable resources.
Kingwest CEO, Ed Turner said: "This is another great result with a limited amount of drilling late in 2019 contributing to an impressive increase in the Pericles resource estimate. Mineralisation remains open along strike and at depth and therefore further increases in the future are possible.”
Kingwest has experienced a solid week of news flow out of Menzies that started with the unearthing of old Mines Department records showing that the old timers left lucrative swathes of dirt up to nearly 50 grams per tonne gold behind in the old underground mines that are present on Kingwest’s ground.
If the Perth based, ASX-listed company can also get an open pit story to hang together it will have the best of both worlds.
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By Matt Birney
