Xpedra Resources is casting its eyes further afield at the company's rapidly emerging Springfield gold project in New South Wales, kicking off a systematic soil sampling program to hunt for new standout targets along strike from its high-grade gold discovery.
The low-cost exploration blitz is set to explore a prospective seven-kilometre-long structural gold corridor to the south of its main deposit, as the company eagerly awaits recent reverse circulation (RC) drilling results.
Xpedra’s success at Springfield has been a textbook example of how modern exploration can breathe new life into a forgotten asset. The company only acquired the project in late 2025, noting it had seen no drilling since 1999 and that historical exploration had been largely shallow and piecemeal. However, that all changed when Xpedra's maiden drilling blitz in March returned a continuous string of impressive, wide and shallow high-grade gold intercepts.
The company is now waiting on a slew of extensional RC drilling results, hopeful it can replicate recent standout figures from the March program, which included a 94-metre hit grading two grams per tonne (g/t) gold from 80m,featuring a stunning higher-grade core of 13m at 10.21g/t gold. A separate hole landed an equally impressive result with a 44-metre hit running 2.03g/t gold from just 1m below surface.
Management believes the results to date point to a robust intrusion-hosted gold system containing multiple higher-grade shoots within wider mineralised halos. Confident in its emerging gold system, the company will roll out a new soils program covering 750 samples across a 14-square-kilometre area, providing a cost-effective way to screen a large area for big new gold targets for the drill bit.
Xpedra Resources managing director Scott Funston said: “Following the strong results from our initial drilling at the Springfield Gold Deposit, we are taking a systematic approach to understanding the broader exploration opportunity along strike of the deposit, while also evaluating other prospective areas within the wider Slashers Flat tenements. Soil geochemistry is a low-cost and effective exploration tool that allows us to evaluate a large area efficiently to identify areas that warrant more detailed follow-up and drill-testing.”
Once the pending assays land, Xpedra plans to launch an extensive third-phase drilling program to attack its rapidly expanding, shallow and emerging gold deposit.
A key priority for the upcoming campaign will be the first-ever proper drill test of the company's 1.1-kilometre northern continuation of the mineralised intrusion. Historical shallow aircore drilling in this area defined extensive gold and arsenic anomalism that has never been followed up with deeper drilling.
The company will also continue to test for down-dip extensions of the 400m of strike drilled so far, which remains open at depth, while deliberately targeting extensions to its best high-grade hits.
With $3.1 million in the bank at the end of the June quarter, Xpedra says it remains well-funded to push ahead with both the soil sampling and all of its planned drilling. The timing of the new work could hardly be better, with the gold price once again springing back to life and surging past US$4500 (A$6325) an ounce against a backdrop of explosive US debt and weakening bond markets.
After sitting dormant for more than two decades, Springfield is certainly getting the attention it now deserves.
With a major soil program underway to expand the search, assays pending from depth-testing drilling and a significant new drill campaign being planned to test 1.1km northern extensions, Xpedra looks set to generate plenty of continuous newsflow in a once again white-hot gold market.
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By Andrew Todd
