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Gold: Here’s about $210,000 in gold bars that Austar just poured from its Morningstar mine
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Freshly minted gold producer Austar Gold (ASX:AUL) pours another 6kg of dore bullion as it ramps up production at its Morningstar mine.
A doré bar is usually created at the mine site and then transported to a refinery for further purification.
This what 6kg (or ~211oz) looks like:
Austar now has 11.778kg (or 415.5oz) of doré in the bag for April.
We don’t have the numbers for this lot, but the previous production batch comprised 78.26 per cent gold and 16.88 per cent silver. That means the bars above should work out to around $210,000 worth.
It took just 423 tonnes of feedstock from the high grade McNally’s Reef to pour this amount.
McNally’s Reef continues to deliver very impressive gold grades, the company says.
In March, the company intersected this kind of visible gold during Morningstar development:
Morningstar was a historic operation in Victoria which produced more than 800,000oz at an average grade of 26.5 grams per tonne over its life.
There’s only enough gold inventory to sustain production for six months, AuStar says, but this will be replaced via further exploration.
Investors loved the news, sending the stock up 12.5 per cent in morning trade.
In other gold news today:
For early-stage mineral explorers, the initial discovery stage can send a stock rocketing into multi-bagger territory. Just look at Spectrum Metals (ASX:SPX), which went into the stratosphere after it hit bonanza gold grades at Penny West last month.
Chalice Gold Mines (ASX:CHN) is searching for tier 1 targets in Quebec, Canada. It’s now kicking off the next phase of prospect scale exploration at its East Cadillac project.
“Many of the 5Moz-plus high-grade deposits on the Cadillac trend commence at depths of ~250m and can extend to depths of more than 2.5km,” says managing director Alex Dorsch. “Given the complete lack of deep drilling on the Project outside of the Simon West – Chimo – Nordeau trend, we believe that testing the depth potential of several advanced prospects is also a logical next step for exploration activity.”
The advanced Tuvatu project in Fiji could be of similar scale to the nearby 7 million ounce Vatukoula deposit, says Lion One Metals (ASX:LLO). Lion One has now kicked off an aggressive drilling campaign at the project, following up shallow grades like 51 grams per tonne gold, just 20m from surface.
But the company also says very little drilling has been done below depths of 400m, where previous hits — like 1614 g/t gold from 335m – are definitely worth a closer look.
