STK’s 40,000m aircore drilling program has uncovered an exciting discovery – termed Marwari – in an area that has not been historically drill tested. Pic via Getty Images.
Mining
Drilling has yielded an impressive discovery at Marwari, a newly discovered +350m long trend at Strickland’s Yandal gold project.
Since June 2021, Strickland Metals (ASX:STK) has executed a series of acquisitions to consolidate the entire NE flank of the prolific Yandal Greenstone belt in WA’s Goldfields region, about 50kms north of Northern Star’s (ASX:NST) underground Jundee operation.
The project includes the Horse Well prospect, which despite significant historical drilling, is very poorly understood due to haphazard, patchy exploration work in the past.
In its aim to systemically explore for gold in new areas, STK kicked off a major 40,000m aircore drilling program at Yandal in early August to understand and fully evaluate the mineralisation potential across the 45km strike length and extend shear zones to the south, where much of the previous exploration work has been conducted.
This drilling has now returned a spectacular high-grade gold discovery in HWAC1472 with a 31m intersection grading 5.6 g/t gold from 72m — including 8m at 17.7 g/t gold — at the newly identified Marwari trend.
Importantly, the hole ended in mineralisation which suggests the mineralisation may continue at depth.
Meanwhile, the same structure appears to have been intersected by STK in aircore drilling 100m to the south, and again 250m further south, for a drilled strike length of 350m thus far. The shear zone and BIF formation, which host the gold, are traceable in geophysical datasets for an additional 1.5km to the south, meaning Strickland has tested only one fifth of the structure.
These assays are pending.
Sitting down with Stockhead, STK CEO Andrew Bray says it’s quite remarkable that this is the first time anyone has taken a holistic approach to the Horse Well prospect, especially given it compares favourably to De Grey Mining’s (ASX:DEG) first hits at Hemi in 2019, which returned strong intersections like 43m at 3.7 g/t gold from 36m and 25m at 2.7 g/t from 32m.
News of DEG’s gold discoveries significantly re-rated the stock from 5c to its current $1.33 price.
“Horse Well is an extremely fertile area for gold, and we are feeling increasingly confident that this drilling program can deliver further discoveries like Marwari,” Bray says.
“We are the first group to start systematically looking for gold mineralisation in new areas and have pretty quickly found something that looks really promising.
“The same structure appears to have been intersected 100m to the south in an aircore fence line, then intersected again a further 250m south in another aircore fence line, with both fence lines having been drilled last week.
“This gives a total strike length thus far of 350m.
“Our current program has not only delivered us a very exciting new discovery at Marwari but has also provided more understanding of the system and controls on mineralisation,” he adds.
“This work will allow the company to vector towards further mineralisation, and potentially make additional discoveries in the region.”
The discovery sits in an analogous geological setting to the nearby Millrose gold deposit with intense silica alteration, a near vertical dip to the shear zone, and the presence of a BIF marker horizon.
The drill program (20,000m completed thus far) is being amended to complete closer spaced aircore lines over the Marwari discovery, with immediate systematic follow up RC drilling to be scheduled.
STK recently sold Millrose to miner Northern Star in July for a cool $61m. It is now extremely well-funded to capitalise on Marwari and unlock value in additional discoveries currently program may yield.
This article was developed in collaboration with Strickland Metals, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.
This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.
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