Quiet achiever Vango Mining had a fantastic 2018. 2019 hasn’t been as kind on the share price (so far), yet exceptional results from the Marymia gold project continue to flow.

In April, Vango (ASX:VAN) released a resource upgrade for its Trident deposit – 410,000oz grading 8 grams per tonne (g/t) — which it called the “first major milestone” to becoming a producer.

To put that in perspective, a mineable deposit above 5g/t can be considered high grade.

But the company maintains the overall size and scale of the high-grade Marymia project in the Mid-West region of WA is a long way from being fully realised.

“The fact that the Trident resource was confirmed from drilling of just 20 per cent of the current known 5km strike‐length of the Trident‐Marwest‐Mareast Gold Corridor, that it remains open at depth, and that it represents just one of at least six key gold mineralised corridors within the project area, indicates that we are really only just scratching the surface of what is potentially a world‐class, large‐scale, high‐grade gold mining operation,” exec chairman Bruce McInnes told investors in October.

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Mars Exploration

Today the explorer announced new shallow, high-grade, gold intersections from drilling at the Mars prospect at the north-eastern end of the 2km Trident-Marwest zone.

Results included 15m at 4.15g/t gold from 34m – thick, high-grade intersections from shallow depths which tick all the boxes and further highlight the project’s resource expansion potential.

Vango says the new gold intersections at Mars remain ‘open’ to the southwest “where the zone may link with the Marwest deposit and/or extend below Marwest to connect with the Trident resource, 2km to the southwest”.

The company plans to confirm new open-pit resource estimates for Mars and Mareast (where the explorer recently hit grades like 10m at 22.6g/t from 50m), two deposits that offer potential for early high-grade open-pit production in any future mining operation.