Falcon has high grade gold hits in the September 2022 quarter. Pic: via Getty Images
ASX Resources Quarterlies: Falcon has high grade gold less than a year from listing
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It’s quarterlies season and the ASX market announcements page has become increasingly flooded with lodgements.
To save you the trouble of trudging through it all, we’ve wrapped up the highlights from some of the reports that caught our eye in the last two days.
During the September quarter, Falcon Metals intersected high-grade gold at the Ironbark East within the Pyramid project in Victoria.
Notable results included a thick 40m zone grading 2.8g/t gold from 50m including 26m at 4.2g/t gold from 51m and high-grade intercepts of 2m at 15.42g/t gold from 51m and 1m at 17.06g/t gold from 62m.
This has encouraged the company to start a substantially larger drill program later in 2022.
Over at the Viking project in Western Australia, reverse circulation drilling had intersected several mineralised zones with visible gold logged in panning of the drill chips within five of the 10 holes drilled.
Assays from this program are expected in November.
The September quarter was marked by A-Cap’s announcement of a new development program to revitalise its Letlhakane uranium project in Botswana with experienced mining executive Peter Sheehan appointed as its Botswana country manager to drive this program.
As part of this, the company has started a comprehensive beneficiation test work program which includes ore sorting and gravity separation to improve the mill feed grade to the mill and reduce operating costs.
A review of hydrometallurgy and potential redesign of the process circuit is underway.
Separately, drilling has started at the Wilconi nickel-cobalt project to convert current Indicated resources to the even higher confidence Measured category.
Citigold Corporation continued to progress its Charters Towers gold project towards a restart during the quarter with greenfield exploration identifying 18 sites in an area where no historical outcropping gold deposits have been reported.
Further work to trace the source of the anomalous rock samples is underway with geophysical data and structural geology being assessed to narrow down areas for further analysis and field sampling.
The company also continued to optimise Central Mine design and engineering during this period with mine planning focused on optimising the method to most efficiently define areas for production stoping.
Work has found that a twin decline system of access will provide a much higher level of exposure for ore definition drilling, which is expected to significantly reduce underground-level development and lower operating costs.
Other Central Mine design and engineering activities continued to progress including planning, scheduling, and optimisation reviews.
During the September quarter, Magnetite Mines has shifted its strategy in response to increased industry interest in its Razorback iron ore project due to its potential to provide feedstock for low emissions steel production and direct market feedback.
This includes increasing the initial development scale to 5 million tonnes per annum or more to better match the growing market opportunity and take advantage of the project’s first quartile global cost competitiveness.
It will also evaluate potential Direct Reduction grade concentrate production suitable for low-emission steelmaking demand and carry out optimisation studies to improve mining, processing and logistics efficiencies, reduce project risk and further decrease mine-to-customer cost outcomes.
Optimisation studies will draw heavily on all work undertaken by the company to date, including all transferable information from Definitive Feasibility Study-level engineering work completed during 2022.
Additionally, the company has strengthened key project stakeholder relationships, advanced permitting and appointed highly-experienced resources executive Tim Dobson as its chief executive officer.
Sultan spent the September quarter preparing for the follow-up drilling of aircore holes at the Kulin Hill nickel prospect, which kicked off in mid-October.
Previous aircore drilling at the project had returned strongly elevated responses in elements such as nickel, chromium, magnesium, iron, sulphur and cobalt that are indicative of weathered ultramafic lithology.
Results also indicate the sequence is quick thick and warrants deeper testing.
Separately, the company continued to review and compile all exploration data so far collected across its suite of highly attractive porphyry and epithermal exploration targets in the Macquarie Arc volcanic rocks of the Lachlan Fold Belt, New South Wales.
This review is intended to define the next round of exploration and drill targets across the projects.
At Stockhead we tell it like it is. While A-Cap Energy, Magnetite Mine and Sultan Resources are Stockhead advertisers, they did not sponsor this article.
