Novo Resources’ earn-in partner De Grey Mining has recorded significant gold hits from an ongoing air-core (AC) and reverse-circulation (RC) drill campaign at their shared Becher gold project in Western Australia’s Pilbara region.
De Grey has completed 10,500m of a planned 39,000m drill program at the operation, with initial assays returning positive results including an 8m intercept at 4.74 grams per tonne gold from 96m at the Lowe target. The section also includes a higher-grade 3m intercept grading an impressive 11.88g/t gold from 100m.
The Lowe target sits about 20km from De Grey’s impressive 11.5-million-ounce Hemi 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 investment deal with Novo, 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” joint venture (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 Resources executive co-chairman and acting chief executive officer Michael Spreadborough said: “What excites us the most at Novo is that the Egina JV tenements are considered highly-prospective for significant intrusion-related gold deposits, with similar attributes to the 12.7 Moz Au (JORC 2012) Hemi Gold Project. De Grey understands the enormous potential of this ground and this is just the start of an exciting exploration partnership.”
Follow-up RC drilling into a base metal-gold corridor previously defined by Novo at its Heckmair prospect within the Egina Gold Camp intersected a significant zone of mineralisation. Management says the base metal corridor trends west/north-west through the Heckmair intrusion, with broad intervals of anomalous base metals and low-level gold mineralisation mapping a fault of more than 1.5km in strike.
Assay highlights from Heckmair returned a 3m intercept at 0.2g/t gold, 59.8g/t silver, 0.9 per cent copper 2.4 per cent lead and 2.2 per cent zinc from just 47m. A 6m section also delivered significant results grading 0.48g/t gold, 20.87g/t silver, 0.2 per cent copper, 1.4 per cent lead and 2.8 per cent zinc from 105m. The best gold intercept from the recent drilling returned 2m grading 2.8g/t.
De Grey plans to target the Becher area with follow-up AC and RC drilling at priority targets at both Heckmair and Lowe throughout this year.
Becher 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 sit at a whopping 11.7 million gold ounces.
Novo officially launched on the ASX in September last year when a successful IPO netted the company $7.5 million before costs through the issue of 37.5 million common shares. The company is also listed in Canada on the TSX.
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By Michael Philipps
