Gold: Nexus Minerals gets off to a flying start at Wallbrook

Gold explorer Nexus Minerals (ASX:NXM) has hit high grade gold in the first round of aircore drilling at its “highly prospective” Wallbrook project.

After drilling 91 holes across a 4375m-long corridor, Nexus said it had “successfully intersected high grade gold mineralisation”.

Highlights included 1m grading 24.2 grams per tonne, inside a larger 3m section grading 8.37g/t.

The aim of the drilling was to test for an extension to its existing Crusader mineral resource, which currently stands at 85,000 ounces.

Shares in the company were up eight per cent in morning trade at 5.5c, still off from the 12-month high of 7.4c reached in February this year.

Moving on up

Nexus said its aircore program “tested and confirmed” the existence of a mineralised envelope extending out from the Crusader resource for a distance of 3km.

The results were good enough for Nexus to approve the next round of drilling, starting with more aircore to fill in the gaps from the first run and gain clarity around the best target mineralisation zones.

Nexus will then commence deeper reverse circulation (RC) drilling based the best aircore zones.

The aircore drill program is part of the company’s broader efforts to establish a resource at its Wallbrook project — a 250 square-km exploration zone Nexus created via the acquisition of neighbouring tenements in WA’s eastern goldfields.

ALSO READ: How good have surging gold prices really been for our explorers?

In other ASX gold news today:

Mako Gold (ASX:MKG) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding to enter into a ‘drill-for-equity’ with Africa-based mining services company Geodrill. Under the terms of the 12-month deal, Geodrill will be eligible to subscribe to shares in Mako up to the value of $1m, in return for drilling services rendered. Geodrill CEO Dave Harper said the agreement will allow Mako to drill “twice the meterage for the same cash burn” at its gold exploration projects in Côte d’Ivoire and Burkina Faso.

Bardoc Gold (ASX:BDC) said its latest drilling program resulted in “outstanding wide zones of strong gold mineralisation” at its Eldorado prospect, 50km north of Kalgoorlie. Bardoc said the new find is in addition to the wider project’s recently-updated 3.02 million ounce mineral resource. Bardoc will now commence a diamond drilling operations to provide structural information on the nature of the deposit.

And Impact Minerals (ASX: IPT) has entered into a trial-mining agreement at its Blackridge gold project in Queensland. The full costs of the operation will be borne by private contractor, Nimble Resources. The aim of the trial is to test for Blackridge’s potential as a larger open-pit gold mine. IPT still needs final approval from Queensland regulators before the trial mine can go ahead.