Buoyed by encouraging early results from a maiden drill campaign at its Nunyerry North gold project in Western Australia’s Pilbara region, Novo Resources has expanded the program by another four holes.
The company has received results from the first six reverse-circulation (RC) drill holes with highlights showing a 13m hit at 1.18 grams per tonne gold from surface and 7m going 1.12g/t gold from 38m.
Nunyerry North sits in the south of Novo’s highly prospective Egina gold camp that consists of 80km of contiguous tenements. The peak result from the maiden drill program shows a 1m section grading 4.64g/t gold from just 2m.
Management says significant zones of quartz veins and variable sulphides have been intersected. The initial results show each hole assayed to date has hit gold mineralisation of more than 1g/t gold.
The company has completed a total of 24 RC holes over more than 2000m with the additional four-hole expansion set to be wrapped up this month.
The Nunyerry North project is a 70:30 joint venture with famed WA “prospector” Mark Creasy. Previous exploration at the operation highlighted more than 1.4kms of strike in surface gold anomalies, with rock-chip samples from the Nunyerry area last year returning results including 8.81 grams per tonne gold and 7.39g/t gold.
Novo Resources executive co-chairman and acting chief executive officer Michael Spreadborough said: “We are very pleased with these initial results from the drilling at Nunyerry North, which have delivered intercepts of up to 13 m @ 1.18 g/t Au from surface. As a result of these results we have increased the size of the program to 2,300 m and look forward to completing the final holes by late October.”
De Grey Mining has kicked off a 39,000m air-core (AC) drilling campaign across Novo’s nearby Becher gold project. In June, Novo secured the support of De Grey as a cornerstone investor and potential joint venture (JV) partner, in a deal worth up to $35 million at the Becher project.
The operation spans a 20-square-kilometre area of the Egina gold camp in the underexplored Mallina Basin and directly neighbours De Grey’s bulging Mallina deposit. It lies just 2.5km south of De Grey’s Withnell South discovery.
Mallina’s resource was recently upgraded by 1.1 million ounces through ongoing drilling to now sit at a whopping 11.7 million gold ounces. The deposit forms part of De Grey’s revered Hemi gold project where a recently-completed scoping study suggests the operation could churn out an average gold production figure of about 427,000 ounces per annum in a 10-year period.
As part of its recent deal, De Grey has the right to earn a 50 per cent interest in Becher and adjacent tenements by spending $25 million in four years. The 50-50 “Egina” JV will be then formed, with a minimum $7 million to be spent within 18 months.
De Grey will manage all exploration at Becher under the earn-in agreement and will become the manager of the Egina JV once it is established. Novo recently completed a 61,400m AC drill campaign at Becher, sinking 2540 holes that identified 207 intercepts recording more than 0.5g/t gold and 109 hits exceeding 1g/t.
Novo also expects to launch a drill campaign at its Belltopper gold project in Victoria as early as next month while planning is underway for drilling at the company’s Balla Balla gold project in the Pilbara region.
With plenty of money to play with following the successful Becher deal with De Grey and numerous drill campaigns planned at a swag of gold projects, the market will be keeping a close eye on what Novo can unearth as exploration continues at pace.
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By Michael Philipps
