- Brightstar Resources identifies a further 1.5km of strike to the north of its 303,000oz Cork Tree Well deposit near Laverton
- It continues a run of positive news flow for the company following the start of mining at the Selkirk joint venture and a robust scoping study for the restart of its mothballed processing infrastructure
- More drilling planned at Cork Tree Well as well as the high-grade Aspacia prospect down at Menzies
Special Report: Brightstar Resources has extended the strike of its 303,000oz Cork Tree Well deposit, 30km north of Laverton, by a further 1.5km following a successful aircore drilling program.
It has been a busy couple months for Brightstar Resources (ASX: BTR) with first ore recently mined under the Selkirk joint venture and a positive scoping study completed over its +1Moz Menzies and Laverton projects.
Much of the focus has been down at the Menzies group of projects where Brightstar’s joint venture partner BML Ventures is overseeing mining at the Selkirk open pit for processing via the Genesis Minerals (ASX: GMD) Gwalia plant early next year.
Last week the company announced a maiden resource of 21,200oz @ 1.07g/t gold for the Link Zone prospect at Menzies, whilst also indicating it could be another near-term cashflow opportunity like Selkirk.
Brightstar is currently in the throes of a PFS on a potential restart of its mothballed processing plant near Laverton, which was recently valued as having a $60.9 million replacement cost.
A scoping study earlier this year flagged estimated gold production of roughly 40,000ozpa over an initial eight years, generating post-tax NPV of $103 million, IRR of 79% and payback in 1.5 years.
It’s all happening in the north
As part of the PFS work program, 2500m of aircore drilling was recently completed to the north of the existing 303,000oz @ 1.4g/t gold resource at Cork Tree Well, part of Brightstar’s Laverton project area.
Drilling was designed to test for anomalous gold mineralisation along strike to the north of the main Cork Tree Well orebodies.
Assay results from the recently completed campaign and analysis of historical aircore drilling indicate a coherent zone of bedrock mineralisation anomalism to the north of the Cork Tree Well resource. This includes a 1.5-2km long zone anomalism associated with the same geological sequence which hosts the main Cork Tree Well orebodies.
“The results of this program are highly encouraging given there is a clear +1.5km strike extent at the northern end of the tenement that is highly anomalous with mineralised intercepts over multiple drill lines,” Brightstar managing director Alex Rovira said.
“Importantly, the bottom of hole lithology from our aircore program indicates that this area also correlates with the sedimentary unit and mafic contact that hosts the 303,000oz Cork Tree Well deposit to the south.”
More drilling to come… but let’s look at Aspacia first
In a bid to gain further insight into this newly discovered northerly extension of the mine geology corridor at Cork Tree Well, Brightstar intends to complete follow-up aircore drilling which will tighten up the spacings between the recently drilled lines to better refine deeper RC drilling targets.
A new RC drilling campaign will also kick off at the high-grade Aspacia prospect, part of the Menzies gold project, later this month.
Brightstar is quietly confident of finalising a maiden resource for Aspacia, where mid-year RC drilling intersected mineralisation grading up to 40g/t gold, in the near term.
“We see real potential to delineate a high-grade maiden MRE at Aspacia to potentially add into the mine plan currently being advanced in the PFS under way,” Rovira said.
This article was developed in collaboration with Brightstar Resources, 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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