Pic: Tyler Stableford / Stone via Getty Images
March quarter results keep Lefroy smiling
Mining
share
Special Report: Lefroy is maintaining the exploration pace as its two projects take off.
Gold explorer Lefroy Exploration (ASX:LEX) looks to bed down its growing portfolio of discoveries.
At its wholly-owned Non-JV and highly prospective Eastern Lefroy tenement package, which contains the growing Lucky Strike discovery the company plans to maintain the pace of exploration over the next two months.
They are currently in a two-part drilling program of 10 reverse circulation (RC) holes totaling 1100m and three diamond holes totaling 950m at Lucky Strike in Western Australia.
They’re planning to use auger drilling to uncover the extent of the Havelock and Erinmore trends immediately to the south of Lucky Strike.
RC drilling is used to gather preliminary data on minerals and is cheaper and faster than diamond drilling.
Diamond drilling is usually done to recover quality core samples to gain a greater appreciation of the geology and controls on mineralisation.
In the Western Lefroy tenement Gold Fields has been busy undertaking a major drilling program as part of a $25m farm-in and joint venture which is continuing. It owns an 18 per cent stake in Lefroy.
Wade Johnson Managing Director of Lefroy says “It has been a productive and rewarding start to 2019 with exploration on two fronts at the Lefroy Project.”
“That exploration momentum will be maintained during the June Quarter with our JV partner Gold Fields continuing with the foundation aircore drilling in Lake Lefroy, and LEX both maintaining the search deeper, and along strike of Lucky Strike, but also peripheral to at the Havelock prospect.”
Getting Lucky
The last quarter was a busy one for Lefroy, as it launched a drilling campaign in Lucky Strike and its JV partner Gold Fields began hunting down gold beneath Lake Lefroy in Western Lefroy tenement package.
Lefroy has found promising intersections of high-grade gold in a Branded Iron Formation host rock to keep things interesting.
- Subscribe to our daily newsletter
- Join our small cap Facebook group
- Follow us on Facebookor Twitter
In the quarter, Lucky Strike completed a 24-hole RC drilling program totaling 2227m. That delivered notable intersections like 8m at 3.02 grams per tonne (g/t), including 2m at 10.2g/t from 21m, and 1m at 10.5g/t from 12m.
While anything over 5g/t is generally considered high-grade, even grades of 3g/t in Australia are considered good, especially at the current Aussie dollar gold price of over $1,820 an ounce.
Location, location, location
The Lefroy Gold Project is located 50km to the southeast of Australia’s largest gold deposits — Kalgoorlie and just east of and adjoining the multi million ounce St Ives Mining Operation.
The Lucky Strike prospect lies just 5km northwest of the high-grade Lucky Bay open pit, mined by Silver Lake Resources (ASX:SLR) in 2015, and 5km southwest of the Randalls processing plant operated by Silver Lake.
The area near Lucky Strike is a high priority exploration focus for Lefroy, with gold systems identified at Havelock, Neon and Erinmore highlighting district-scale gold prospectivity.
In April, Western Australia’s, Department of Mines, Industry and Regulation granted a new lease covering another 183 hectares, centered on the Lucky Strike prospect and its strike extensions.
“The grant of the mining lease is an early critical key step to allow any future development of the Lucky Strike prospect and compliments the mining lease at Red Dale, granted in 2018, and located approximately 5km to the north east,” the company said.
Go West, my son
At Western Lefroy, heavyweight Gold Fields has so far drilled 6,613m across 132 holes as part of a major aircore drilling program aimed at obtaining geological and geochemical information beneath the lake’s surface for integration with geophysical data.
Results from drilling at Western Lefroy include a significant intersection of 34m at 0.44 grams per tonne (g/t) gold from 32m, located about 2km along strike to the north of the Zanex prospect.
In April, Gold Fields reported it had spent $1.17m on exploration in the area which is part of the minimum expenditure requirement of $4m within two years of the June 2018 start date for the joint venture before Gold Fields can elect to withdraw.
This story was developed in collaboration with Lefroy Exploration, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.
This advice has been prepared without taking into account your objectives, financial situation or needs. You should, therefore, consider the appropriateness of the advice, in light of your own objectives, financial situation or needs, before acting on the advice. If this advice relates to the acquisition, or possible acquisition, of a particular financial product, the recipient should obtain a disclosure document, a Product Disclosure Statement or an offer document (PDS) relating to the product and consider the PDS before making any decision about whether to acquire the product.
