Gold: Newcrest hits build Paterson excitement, Red 5 acquiring Goldfields deposits

It’s a new month and gold explorers in Western Australia’s rather prospective Paterson Province will be excited to know that their 800 pound gorilla of a neighbour, Newcrest Mining (ASX:NCM), has made more high-grade hits at its Havieron project.

The gold major’s latest results, which included a thick high-grade zone of 45.8m at 6.8 grams per tonne (g/t) gold and 0.51 per cent copper from a depth of 543.2m, is part of an going program that has defined a series of higher-grade zones within a broad envelope of mineralisation.

Other explorers have also been looking to benefit from their exposure to the Paterson.

But while we wait for the almost inevitable results of any exploration inspired by Newcrest’s success, let’s take a peek at some merger and acquisition activity in the gold space.

Gold producer Red 5 (ASX:RED) has reached an option agreement to acquire the Cables and Mission gold deposits from private vendor Andrew Paterson that could increase resources and extend mine life at its Darlot mining operation in Western Australia’s Eastern Goldfields region.

The Cables and Mission deposits are just 10km from Darlot and were last reported by Leopard Resources in 2014 to host outdated JORC 2004 resources of 185,000 ounces of gold.

Mineralisation in these deposits is hosted within similar rocks to those that host the Centenary orebody at the Darlot operations.

Red 5 has the option to acquire the deposits and the 38.7sqkm sub-lease they are located on for $2m and a further $500,000 on the definition of a 500,000oz JORC 2012 resource.

Should due diligence be completed to its satisfaction and the option exercised, Red 5 plans to conduct drilling programs and other activities to produce a resource as quickly as possible.

The option agreement is part of the company’s strategy to increase its resource base for the Darlot plant, which includes extending existing resources, step-out underground exploration, exploration for open pit deposits within its existing tenements, and regional ‘bolt-on’ acquisitions.

Now read:
Gold: Those dusty ol’ gold mines are looking pretty good right now

Meanwhile, Terrain Minerals (ASX:TMX) is looking to farm into the Smokebush gold project in the Yalgoo Mineral Field of Western Australia about 65km west of Paynes Find.

Smokebush covers 1732 hectares and is located next to a large tungsten resource at Mt Mulgine and a number of recently developed open pit gold mines.

Terrain has the option to acquire an 80 per cent interest in the project by issuing the vendor 500,000 TMX shares and spending $250,000 on work in the project over two years.

It will also pay up to $500,000 in cash or shares if certain milestones are met.

In other ASX gold news today:

Manhattan Corporation (ASX:MHC) is acquiring Awati Resources, which owns the Tibooburra gold project in New South Wales. Over 1.7 tonnes of gold was extracted from shallow pits, shafts and adits by early prospectors between 1881 and 1901.

Finally, to cap off today’s gold round up, here are some pictures of gold nuggets.

These were discovered by Kalamazoo Resources (ASX:KZR) at its DOM’s Hill project in the Pilbara region. It has also found encouraging gold in soil samples at the nearby Marble Bar gold project.