Special Report: De Grey’s Hemi gold discovery already had multi-million-ounce potential. The explorer has now uncovered a third, potentially very large gold zone called ‘Crow’.
De Grey (ASX:DEG), one of 2020’s most prominent exploration success stories, is up almost 620 per cent year-to-date on the back of its greenfields Hemi gold discovery in the Pilbara region of WA.
In late March, Argonaut analyst Matthew Keane estimated that the combined Brolga and Aquila zones at Hemi could contain 2.8 million ounces alone.
Analysts will now need to add the new 1km long and 300m wide ‘Crow’ anomaly to their calculations.
De Grey says shallow, early stage drilling shows the untested Crow zone to be “of similar scale to Brolga and Aquila”.
Significant new results from this drilling included 4m at 6.9 grams per tonne (g/t) gold, 52m from surface.
Similar to Brolga, the air core drilling at Crow slowed down when it hit the harder bedrock, which means this initial campaign generally only tested the mineralisation to 50-60m downhole depth.
It’s now known that both Aquila and Brolga host strong gold-sulphide mineralisation in the deeper bedrock, defined by deeper RC and diamond drilling.
An initial section, comprising six RC holes, has been drilled to test Crow and adjacent area to Aquila. Results remain pending, but further deeper drilling is now being planned at Crow to test this bedrock mineralisation.
Right now, there’s three rigs turning at Brolga and Aquila, which will culminate in an initial resource estimate.
The all-important metallurgical test work has also commenced.
This testing looks at the ore to determine if extraction and processing can be done economically and is crucial when it comes to turning an exploration-stage project into a profitable mine.