Kaiser Reef is betting there’s still very high-grade gold at Nuggety Reef

Kaiser Reef has kicked off diamond drilling aimed at proving that there’s still gold to be found at one of Australia’s highest grade historical mines.

The company has two rigs drilling at the Maldon goldfield with one now starting on the Nuggety Reef gold mine that had past production of 301,000oz of gold at an eye-popping grade of 187 grams per tonne (g/t), or six ounces of gold to the tonne.

Despite the past performance of Nuggety Reef and its location on the highly prospective contact of classic Bendigo style sediments and Harcourt Granite, the Harcourt contact has not been tested below historical mining.

Testing this contact down plunge will be the focus of Kaiser Reef’s (ASX:KAU) drilling program, which complements ongoing underground exploration drilling at the Maldon Goldfield where initial results have returned narrow but very high-grade gold intersections.

Any significant gold resource at Nuggety Reef or the broader Maldon Goldfield can be quickly developed, given that the historical workings are within a granted mining licence and within spitting distance of the company’s gold processing plant.

Nuggety Reef drilling

The surface drilling program is targeting both the eastern and western reefs within the main north-south Nuggety shear zone to follow up on historical diamond holes.

These include NUGD01 and NUDG02 that returned 0.46m grading 205g/t gold and 1.4m at 9.78g/t gold respectively.

Additional holes will target confirming and infilling other historical results.

Kaiser Reef adds that the Nuggety shear zone continues to the south and the prospective target contact with the Harcourt granite remains essentially untested down plunge.

Nuggety Reef is the most northern reef and mine in the Maldon Goldfield.

Underground drilling is also continuing to the south from underground positions within the Union Hill decline, with most holes intercepting the target Eaglehawk reef at its targeted locations.

This article was developed in collaboration with Kaiser Reef, 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.