High grade hits bode well for mining at Ora Banda’s Golden Eagle

Ora Banda’s underground drilling has returned high-grade hits that supports pre-mining expectations for the North Shoot at the Golden Eagle deposit.

Results such as 19m grading 5.4 grams per tonne (g/t) gold including 11.1m at 8.9g/t gold and 5.8m at 15g/t gold also provide important geological information into the remodelling of the Southern Mining Area.

These results follow on previous assays such as 10.5m at 7.6g/t gold and 6.1m at 4.5g/t gold.

Ora Banda Mining (ASX:OBM) recently increased production rates at Golden Eagle as part of its efforts to ramp up gold production at its Davyhurst project in Western Australia towards its DFS level of about 82,000oz in the 2022 financial year.

Assays are pending for a further 17 diamond holes at Golden Eagle, which remains open down plunge and at depth.

“We are currently developing northwards on the 310 Level towards some of these very strong results and are certainly looking forward to mining this high grade area in the near term,” managing director David Quinlivan said.

“The Southern Mining Area has also yielded some strong results which our geology team are currently remodelling.

“The flatter folded ore lode geometry in this area is a new and potentially significant development and we are currently looking at ways to better target this flatter ore zone in future mining programs.”

ora banda — Golden Eagle long section looking east. Pic: Supplied

Golden Eagle deposit

Golden Eagle is one of five priority mining targets at Davyhurst and was previously the subject of open pit mining by Western Mining Corporation from 1986 that resulted in the production of 73,000oz of gold at an average grade of 2.6g/t.

A further 39,000oz of gold was produced between November 2000 and December 2003 by Croesus Mining.

Ora Banda has defined a resource of 393,000t grading 3.9g/t gold for 49,000oz of contained gold at the deposit that includes an indicated resource of 33,000oz and an ore reserve of 16,000oz.

Mining completed to date on the North Shoot has met DFS expectations while operations in the Southern Mining Area have encountered folded ore lodes that require more work to better understand the controls on gold mineralisation.

The company is carrying out drilling, mapping and additional mine development to better understand gold distribution within the folded lodes though it noted that the grade potential remains strong given that a number of drill holes have intersected what appears to be a high-grade core.

This article was developed in collaboration with Ora Banda 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.