Wiluna Mining Corporation has penned another page in its comeback story as management’s turnaround strategy appears to take hold. With high-grade, wide intersection gold strikes continuing to roll off the bit, headlined by a 37.52m intersection at 10.77g/t, the company is enjoying a renaissance built on a trifecta of steadily increasing cash flows, rising production and reduced operating costs.
Executive chairman at Wiluna, Milan Jerkovic said these latest infill drilling results were notable given their likely influence on updated ore reserves due to be published early in the new year.
The gigantic 37.52m intercept at a solid 10.77 g/t gold from the company’s Bulletin lode also included 10.84m at almost an ounce to the tonne gold and a tad over 3m at an eye-catching 100.53 g/t gold.
Perhaps unsurprisingly the company claims its “sleeping giant” is very much awake now as it drills up a storm to increase confidence in high priority mining areas over the current three to five-year mining window ahead of tabling updated gold reserve numbers in January next year.
Other solid drill results reported this week from Bulletin include 1m at 1.48 g/t and 3.47m at 9.30 g/t gold, 12m at 8.14 g/t gold, 6m at 4.75 g/t gold, 7.41m at 4.35 g/t and 4.05m at 6.08 g/t gold.
To date, the 35-kilometre campaign successfully targeted high-grade, shallow resources close to existing mine infrastructure ripe for picking by rapid, low-cost development at the Bulletin, Calvert, Essex and East Lodes.
Exceptional drill results from each of the priority mining areas continue to roll in, validating the Company’s Stage 1 target of mining approximately 750,000 tonnes of underground sulphide ore per annum to produce, when fully ramped up, approximately 120,000oz per annum in gold bullion and gold-in-concentrate, commencing in October 2021.
The Wiluna gold operation represents Australia’s seventh largest, single owner gold district and the Wiluna Mining Centre’s sulphide development plan is supported by a Mineral Resource of 23.9Mt at 4.89 g/t for 3.76Moz of contained gold using a 2.5 g/t cut-off.
However, Wiluna boasts a Total Mineral Resource of 53Mt at 3.00 g/t for 5.1Moz using a 1.0 g/t cut-off.
Wiluna Mining Executive Chairman, Milan Jerkovic said: “Exceptional drilling results continue to flow from high priority sulphide mining zones at the Wiluna Mining Centre. This is noteworthy because results will underpin our updated Ore Reserves estimate to be published in January 2021. The Company is targeting high-grade zones, because every 1 g/t increase in the grade should result in an additional 25kozpa of production in Stage 1 and 50kozpa in Stage 2.
Indeed, the continued focus of our aggressive drilling campaign is to deliver rapid growth in high-grade Resources and Reserves through infill drilling of the existing large gold resource, and to discover new zones ‘under the headframe’. Very encouragingly, drilling continues to confirm that Wiluna is a very large, very high-grade gold system.”
The company’s Wiluna gold project is located in the north-eastern Goldfields of Western Australia. Its 1,600 square kilometre land holdings in the region cover a strike length greater than 75km across the revered Wiluna-Norseman greenstone belt.
Whilst the Wiluna mine has a 100-year history of production, picking out over 4 million ounces along the way, the gold-rich greenstones within this auriferous terrane look set to give up more jewels.
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By Matt Birney
