Sandstone gold hits stacking up for Aurumin

Aurumin has unveiled a new suite of positive gold hits from four of its seven new targets at the company’s 881,000-ounce Sandstone gold project in Western Australia’s Mid West region following a first-pass reverse-circulation (RC) drilling campaign.

With more imminent drilling to come, the latest finds build on results in May that included a bonanza 1m intersection of 344 grams per tonne gold from the company’s Plum Pudding target.

The April program was designed to test seven new open pit targets with shallow first-pass exploration drilling in a bid to extend two open pit resources. While narrow, the gold intersections are impressive in grade for first-pass attempts and come from particularly shallow open pits.

The highlight hits from the program include the headline-grade slice from Plum Pudding that was found within a longer intercept of 18m going at 25.8g/t gold from 30m and a high-grade 2m with 11.02g/t at Mt Klempt South, in addition to a 2m intersection grading 3.44g/t from the Old Town trend.

Management says it is “spoilt for choice” with prospective drilling targets after many of its new focuses returned encouraging results that warrant follow-up assessment. The company now plans to plunge a further 10 holes into Plum Pudding, which remains open and untested at depth.

Interestingly, the longer 18m at 25.8g/t gold from 30m included an unexpected 2m void that was most likely evidence of old workings.

Aurumin managing director Brad Valiukas said: “We remain focussed on generating the critical mass required for future production at our Sandstone Operations, targeting additional open pit material to support an operational restart. This next round of drilling will look to expand the existing Resource at Plum Pudding, flesh-out some of the confirmed new targets on the mining leases and step further afield to the Birrigrin Project and Dandaraga prospect to target some potential higher-grade sweeteners.”

The Sandstone project area lies 520km north-east of Perth and lies within WA’s East Murchison goldfield. It contains the estimated mineral resource of 881,000 ounces of gold and is part of Aurumin’s greater Sandstone operations that include its Birrigrin project – a historically high-grade production area of up to 196g/t gold and 39 mapped shafts.

Adding the company’s Johnson Range projects, its total gold inventory amounts to 946,000 ounces.

Mt Klempt, sitting just 1.5km east of Aurumin’s Sandstone gold plant, was identified during auger drilling of a strong gold anomaly in 2022 and  represents a relatively new target. The emerging 2m at 11.02g/t gold at Klempt appears to be associated with quartz veining and shearing and has potentially identified shallow, flat-lying high-grade structures for a strike of more than 160m at shallow depths.

Beyond the encouraging RC drill results, further soil sampling assessments were returned from an untested location just 3.5km to the west of the Sandstone mining leases. Management says gold soil readings have now outlined the area for the drill-testing of multiple targets and the air-core (AC) rig is expected on site as soon as this quarter.

After a recent $2.5 million capital raise, a cash boost from the sale of the historic Mt Palmer gold mine to Kula Gold and significant divestment of its Mt Dimer tenements last year to Beacon Minerals for a handy $3 million, the company is now debt-free.

Add in the recent record high gold prices and Aurumin is experiencing a new lease on life where it is properly focusing on its bevy of prospective drilling targets. Pushing over the top of the magic 1 million-ounce resource to kick-start Sandstone into development may not be too far away.    

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