Metal Hawk, Falcon set to spin drill bit at WA gold project

Metal Hawk and farm-in partner Falcon Metals are set to follow up historical results at the duo’s Viking gold project in WA’s highly prospective Albany Fraser Province with a 1600m RC drilling campaign in coming weeks.

Falcon listed on the ASX last December and is the spin-off of heavyweight mineral explorer Chalice Mining's gold interests with an earn-in stake in the Viking project that is located 30km southeast of Norseman.

Falcon will earn into Metal Hawk’s Viking by spending $1 million to earn 51 per cent and a further $1.75 million to push its stake upto 70 per cent.

Upon completion of the earn-in period, a joint venture is on the cards to fund exploration on an ongoing basis.

The drilling campaign is scheduled for later this month and is scheduled to last about two weeks. Assay results are expected within two to three months after that.

Viking is located 30km east southeast of Norseman within the high-grade metamorphic Albany-Fraser province.

The province hosts several world-class deposits including the multi-million-ounce Tropicana gold mine, operated by AngloGold Ashanti and the Nova-Bollinger nickel mine, operated by IGO.

Following Anglo’s discovery of Tropicana in 2005, it stepped up its exploration in the area and discovered Viking in 2011.

The project was divested to Genesis Minerals before the tenement was dropped, and gold and nickel explorer Metal Hawk pegged the area in 2019.

Falcon’s campaign at Viking will target primary gold mineralisation down dip and along strike from historical gold intercepts.

Exploration by the lease’s former owner Anglo returned numerous high-grade shallow oxide intercepts from systematic auger geochemistry, AC and some limited RC/diamond drilling.

Management argues previous drilling at Viking has presented walk-up drill targets in the very same belt that hosts Tropicana.

Anglo defined four prospects, named Beaker 1,2,3 and 4 and Falcon’s campaign will focus on Beaker 1 and 2.

Beaker 2 has previously returned significant high-grade supergene gold mineralisation including 5m at 44 grams per tonne gold from 50m and 4m at 15.4g/t gold from 40m.

Mineralisation discovered has been east-dipping quartz veins with pyrite.

The forthcoming campaign will be Falcon’s first at Viking and comes after the granting of heritage survey clearance by the Ngadju, the local indigenous group.

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