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Gold: Alkane’s Boda gets bigger as the Aussie dollar gold price continues its run up
Mining
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The currency exchange rate continues to favour local companies with the Australian price of gold last trading at about $2,680.80 per ounce, which is up slightly from yesterday despite the US dollar spot gold price slipping slightly.
Meanwhile, Alkane Resources (ASX:ALK) has extended the size of its Boda porphyry gold-copper prospect in New South Wales’ Lachlan Fold Belt to at least 300m north-south by 400m wide and a depth of over 800.
The region was previously believed to be a mature area for exploration, but the emergence of Boda has shown there is still plenty of potential for new greenfields discoveries.
Assays from the latest diamond hole, which was drilled about 100m south of a previous hole that intersected over 1,100m of mineralisation, returned another thick intercept of 965.7m grading 0.21 grams per tonnes (g/t) gold and 0.11 per cent copper from just 7.3m.
This includes a higher grade zone of 153m at 0.4g/t gold and 0.13 per copper from 480m that in turn contains a 29m intercept grading 0.99g/t gold and 0.22 per cent copper.
“Our drilling to date demonstrates broad, ore-grade mineralisation over at least a 300m north-south by 400m wide zone with over 800m depth, with the mineralisation open along strike and at depth, and a significant higher grade core with exceptional characteristics,” managing director Nic Earner said.
“Alkane has one further hole to report from this program, we will then be consolidating results, together with our recently conducted IP survey, and determining the size and scale of our next drill program.”
Over in Western Australia, Alto Metals (ASX:AME) has re-sampled assays from recent drilling that highlights the potential for primary gold mineralisation beneath the existing Lord Nelson open pit within its Sandstone project.
The new 1m fire assays include 17m at 3.5g/t gold from a depth of 200m including 4m at 11.6g/t gold from 211m and 1m at 25.5g/t gold from 214m; and 16m at 5.2g/t gold from 240m including 3m at 13.5g/t gold from 240m.
Results above 5g/t gold are generally considered to be high-grade.
Alto said the results confirmed the continuity of wide zones of high-grade gold mineralisation below the shallow mined historical Lord Nelson open pit.
Hammer Metals’ (ASX:HMX) extensional aircore drilling program has confirmed further zones of shallow gold mineralisation that remain open in all directions at its Bronzewing South project.
Drilling at the Orelia Targe 1 prospect returned up to 4m at 3.88g/t gold from 24m and 8m at 1.93g/t gold from 36m including 4m at 2.5g/t gold from 40m, doubling the mineralised trends to over 2km in strike length.
The company completed more than half of the drill program before suspending operations in March and plans to resume operations once COVID-19 restrictions are relaxed.
