Larvotto Resources has kicked off a major diamond drilling program at its 100 per cent-owned Hillgrove gold-antimony project in New South Wales in a bid to expand the known mineral resource. The company is looking to target areas near the proposed mine and is hoping to follow up on a stella prior drill hit of 31m grading a whopping 65.8 grams per tonne gold.
The company has already been busy in the past three weeks with reverse circulation (RC) drilling at the Clarks Gully prospect. Known for its steep-dipping zone, the deposit contains a measured and indicated mineral resource of 266,000 tonnes grading 3.8 per cent antimony and 2 grams per tonne gold (g/t) for 10.6 g/t gold equivalent. The deposit, which extends from the surface to a depth of 200m, remains open in all directions, particularly at depth, signalling the potential for further resource expansion.
While work at Clarks Gully has been temporarily suspended to allow the rig to punch out some pre-collar work ahead of the diamond drilling at Garibaldi, samples have already sent to the laboratory for assay testing.
With the diamond rig now running flat out at Garibaldi the company is keen to focus on infill and extensions of its 2.3 million tonne resource at Garibaldi grading 6.6g/t gold equivalent, including 372,000 ounces of gold and 17,000 tonnes of antimony. The first phase of drilling includes six holes totalling 1,900m to drill down-dip extensions with plans to extend beyond that depending on the findings.
Phase 2 will then punch out an additional 14 drill holes for 5,490m to infill the drill spacing to allow for a new resource calculation and further define the extent of mineralisation at depth.
A second diamond rig is set to join the operation and head straight to Larvotto’s third target, the Bakers Creek prospect, which delivered impressive results in May of 31m going 65.8 g/t gold from 244m including 5.3m at a sizeable 220 g/t gold. The company has now identified seven distinct mineralised zones for drilling, with management confident that any of them could potentially replicate these high-grade results.
The second phase of drilling at Bakers Creek will span 13 holes over 5,860m, followed by a third phase with 15 holes totalling 7,000m aiming to validate and extend the mineralised deeper zones of Big Reef, Middle Reef and Baalgammon Reef, while testing new ground at the uncharted Hills Reef.
Larvotto Resources managing director Ron Heeks said: “The planned drill programs will follow up on the significant drilling successes from earlier this year. We are very optimistic that these earlier extraordinary results can be replicated. The targets are the first of many near mine drilling targets Larvotto will be exploring to increase the overall Mineral Resources within the Hillgrove Mineral Field.”
With no definitive end date to the drill program, Larvotto expects to keep chewing out the metres over the next few months in a bid to strengthen its high-grade resource base at Hillgrove.
With the Australian gold price hitting an all-time high today of $4090 per ounce and antimony smashing through US$25,000 (AU$37,000) per tonne, Larvotto looks to be in the right commodities at the right time.
And the market looks like it agrees with Larvotto’s share price running hard from 12.5c in mid-August too over 50c today.
Hillgrove is expected to produce 41,000 ounces of gold and 4500 tonnes of antimony per year. The remarkable part of the Larvotto story, is after accounting for antimony sales, it will cost the company nothing to produce the gold and in fact it will likely have a negative cost to produce the gold.
Perhaps more remarkably, Larvotto bought the Hillgrove project from short-sighted administrators for a mere $3 million and a replacement $5m environmental bond just 12 months ago.
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By James Pearson
