Great Southern targets 2021 mining approvals at Mon Ami gold project

Special Report: The development of Great Southern Mining’s (ASX:GSN) ~60,000oz (and growing) Mon Ami gold project in WA will deliver “a robust source of cashflow”.

Great Southern will kick off the “full suite” of required development activities at Mon Ami, with the goal of obtaining mining approvals during 2021.

They include an upgraded resource, as well as environmental, heritage and other technical studies.

The objective is to have a “shovel ready” project to present to nearby mills as part of proposed commercial discussions.

There are numerous processing options within 150km of Mon Ami. Just 10km away is Gold Fields’ Granny Smith mill, which is currently operating at half of its installed capacity.

A mine at Mon Ami would provide cash for Great Southern’s aggressive exploration plans across its portfolio – including Cox’s Find, at depth at Mon Ami, and the Edinburgh Park gold project in North Queensland.

Road to production

An upcoming drilling program will look to upgrade the existing 1.1 million tonne at 1.7g/t for 59,000oz resource.

Over 2,000m of drilling has occurred at Mon Ami since that resource was estimated in 2018.

Recent drilling hit thick, shallow high grades like 11m at 7.9 g/t gold from 26m, including 4m @ 15.9g/t.

Great Southern wants to extend these high-grade zones.

Following upcoming drilling, Great Southern plans to have the resource upgraded to the higher confidence ‘Indicated’ classification.

Great Southern is also targeting high grades at depth which it believes are analogous to the Ida H deposit, 14km to the north of Mon Ami along the same regional shear zone.

At Ida H, a rich underground gold deposit – 176,000oz grading 22.8g/t — was hidden under a similar small open pit:

Drilling is expected to kick off in the first week of December, testing these targets at Mon Ami as well as the targets at Cox’s Find.

“We are pleased to announce that our in-house preliminary economic review has identified a potential low-cost development pathway for an open pit mining operation at Mon Ami,” chief exec Sean Gregory says.

“The planned drilling program seeks to expand on this opportunity and test for higher grade extensions to the deposit at depth.

“Rapid development at Mon Ami has the potential to deliver a robust source of cash flow for GSN, allowing further acceleration of the aggressive exploration plans across our Australian gold portfolio.”

This article was developed in collaboration with Great Southern Mining, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.