The prospect of a significant resource upgrade at Magnetic’s Lady Julie North 4 deposit is greater than ever after follow-up drilling returned thick gold intercepts down-dip to its ‘best-ever’ intercept of 60m at 3.6g/t gold.

Not only are the intercepts of 30m at 5.53g/t gold from 145m (MLJDD016) and 45m at 2.65g/t gold from 130m (MLJDD015) encouraging in their own right, these diamond holes have also revealed strong silica-pyrite and breccia alteration up to 52m thick at the MLJDD015 location with strong correlation to the main gold mineralised intervals.

Given that breccia zones play an important role in the nearby (and world-class) Sunrise Dam deposit with brecciated veins and shoots often carrying the highest grades, Magnetic Resources (ASX:MAU) has been quick to commence the drilling of two deeper holes to test this breccia and silica-pyrite zone.

Further deeper holes are also planned to the south of the top intercept within the main mineralised zone, which is continuous over the 800m of strike and dips 35 to 45 degrees to the east and thickens to the south, as existing holes in this direction have ended in mineralisation.

The results to date are hugely encouraging given that LJN4 is just 2.5km north of the Lady Julie Central deposit that is in turn 2.5km northeast of the HN9 deposit.

All three areas are shallow deposits that start from surface in some cases – providing low strip ratios and potential for economic ore that is open-cuttable – and effectively form a single mining centre.

“With the Australian gold price at near record levels of $2860 the Laverton Project Resources, encompassing Lady Julie Central, Lady Julie North 4, HN9, Mt Jumbo and Homeward Bound South, are shaping up and have potential for large-scale shallow open-cuttable deposits,” managing director George Sakalidis noted.

He added that the company saw up to three stacked zones within the centre and the northern end of LJN4 and that the central section is very promising due to the recent intersections with excellent grades and thickness along with the strong correlation with breccia and silica-pyrite zones.

Along with other promising zones, Sakalidis believes there is strong potential to grow the LJN4 resource.

“This is an exciting time for the company having announced its Expanded Mineral Resource on 3 February 2023 and now looking to further increase the size of the LJN4 Resource by recent drill testing the upper and lower stacked zones, which has recently been completed with results pending,” he added.

“Concurrently, the Blue Cap studies are near completion, which provides the company with the ability to fast-track work approvals and further assess the economics of the deposits.”

 

Further drilling

Besides testing the breccia and silica-pyrite zones as well as drilling to the south of LJN4, Magnetic has several other initiatives to really identify further extensions to its current resource of 3.2Mt at 1.93g/t gold, or 204,900oz of contained gold.

These include drilling further reverse circulation wells to further test an upper strongly mineralised zone where hole MLJRC679 returned a 54m intersection grading 1.95g/t gold from 94m.

A significant number of drillholes at this zone, which is open to the north and south, ended in mineralisation outside the existing resource.

Deeper drill holes will also test the down dip extension of the new 30m at 5.53g/t intersection, which remains open.

Further resource extensions are anticipated with planned deep drilling of four RC holes totalling 916m to test for potential extensions especially within the thick breccia silica pyrite zones.

Assays are pending for seven RC totalling 1,222m and 12 diamond holes for 1,324m, which were drilled to test for further extensions of the mineralisation outside the resource.

 

 

This article was developed in collaboration with Magnetic Resources, 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.

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