Kairos finds a bunch more gold nuggets in the Pilbara and shares fly

Pilbara gold play Kairos Minerals has found two new gold nugget patches that have yielded another 135 nuggets at its Croydon project.

They weighed in at 11.1 ounces and investors loved the news, sending shares up nearly 30 per cent to an intra-day high of 3.1c on Tuesday morning.

The new nugget patches take Kairos’ total discoveries to 391 nuggets with a combined weight of 19.3 ounces.

That is worth roughly $32,389 at the current gold price.

The nuggets have the hallmark “watermelon seed” shape and texture that became a hot topic in July last year when two other Pilbara gold explorers – Artemis Resources (ASX:ARV) and Canadian partner Novo Resources – picked up some at their Purdy’s Reward project near Karratha.

This was later determined to be conglomerate gold – nuggets hosted in rock containing rounded grey quartz pebbles and other minerals.

“We believe that this new discovery is analogous to the Purdy’s Reward and Comet Well discoveries, which are being explored by Novo Resources and Artemis Resources,” chairman Terry Topping said.

Some of the gold nuggets found by Kairos in the Pilbara.

Mr Topping said this was the first time that Kairos had recovered gold from the Hardey Formation, a volcanic rock formation in the Pilbara’s Fortescue Basin that is known to host gold mineralisation as well as copper, zinc and uranium.

The interesting thing about this is that gold within the Hardey Formation found elsewhere in the Pilbara, such as at Novo’s Beaton Creek project, is typically fine grained, evenly distributed, and measurable via standard drilling techniques, according to Mr Topping.

Kairos has now found gold over a strike length of about 6km at its Croydon project.

Kairos impressed the market in September when it revealed it had found 256 gold nuggets during metal detecting of a small area of 150m by 50m at its Croydon project.