Cavalier Resources has been hard at work on setting itself up for a bigger resource at the Crawford gold project with the completion of targeted drone magnetics and a second drilling program.

Cavalier Resources (ASX:CVR) has ticked another box at its flagship Crawford gold project in Western Australia with the completion of a second reverse circulation drilling program aimed at investigating structures discovered in the maiden program as well potential extensions of the resource.

Targeted drone magnetics programs, meanwhile, were completed at Crawford and Gambier Lass North.

“Cavalier has now completed its second drill campaign of 28 holes for a total of 2,381m at the Crawford gold project,” executive technical director Daniel Tuffin said.

“The program was planned to further investigate the southern sub-vertical and northern fresh rock mineralised structures discovered in our maiden campaign and test near-resource exploration targets resulting from the drone magnetics survey over the extended Crawford corridor.”

Late last year Cavalier announced a 17% increase in the Crawford resource to around 3.8 million tonnes at 1 gram per tonne (g/t) for 117,800oz of gold.

The resource remains open along strike and at depth, which provides Cavalier with plenty of exploration upside potential and spurred the company on to undertake more drilling.

The drone surveys were carried out over specific corridors of the Crawford and Gambier Lass North projects to identify additional areas worthy of drill-testing, along strike of known mineralisation.

Cavalier noted that the geophysical data collected from the recent drone survey had been useful for refining focus on new areas for further exploration.

“Analysis of the high-definition drone survey specifically highlighted the northern fresh rock ‘Miranda’ target, which could represent a deeper source for mineralisation in the form of a major structure,” Tuffin explained.

Cavalier said the drone magnetic survey conducted at Crawford demonstrated a robust broadly NW-trending magnetic feature (Crawford structural trend) which appeared broken up in places along its strike length by several second-order structures.

The main mineralisation identified at Crawford sits in an area of broadly lower magnetic response, just on the edge of the magnetic high which defines the trend.

This is typical of many gold deposits within WA’s Eastern Goldfields, according to Cavalier.

The company is also currently investigating the potential for onsite processing at Crawford, kicking off further studies into heap leach processing in early April after high level internal studies indicated the potential for the oxide portion of the resource to be extracted and processed using the low-cost industry standard processing method.

Cavalier decided to take the initiative to assess the potential for owner-operator processing because “recent M&A instability in the region has cast some doubt on the company securing viable toll milling options for the Crawford gold project in the near term”.

“Excitingly, drilling also provided metallurgical samples to allow the company to begin coarse crush leach test work as part of our ongoing investigation into the potential to mill oxide material at Crawford via heap leaching methods,” Tuffin said.

Samples have now been submitted for assay and once Cavalier has all the results in hand, the explorer plans to start work on an updated resource.

This story was developed in collaboration with Cavalier Resources, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.

This story does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.

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