Milestone approval sets Classic on the road to gold production

Classic’s transition into a gold producer is now well and truly underway after the WA Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety approved its Mining Proposal.

The company is already in the process of carrying out bulk sampling at the project under the terms of the exploration licence and with the scalable Gekko processing plant already on site, full-scale mining is likely to be next on the agenda.

Classic Minerals (ASX:CLZ) is currently looking to extract between 5,000t to 7,000t of ore grading between 4 grams per tonne (g/t) and 6g/t gold, or between 645 and 1,100 contained ounces of gold under the bulk sampling program.

Not only does this represent a small portion of Kat Gap’s current 93,000oz resource, it also gives it the opportunity to test and refine the 30 tonne per hour Gekko plant, which can be scaled to a processing capacity of 250tph – an ideal feature as the company ramps up operations.

“The completion of the extensive environmental and social approvals process by the DMIRS is a significant achievement for the company,” chairman John Lester said.

“Securing the necessary approvals will enable full-scale construction and mining activities to begin.”

Classic minerals — Bulk sample pit, camp and ROM pad at Kat Gap. Pic: Supplied

Bulk sampling turns up surprise

The company had kicked off bulk sampling at Kat Gap back in August last year as a precursor to full-scale mining.

It noted at the time the work would provide valuable geological, engineering, and metallurgical data while processing of the bulk sample would allow it to test and refine the plant.

Bulk sampling was paused after continuous rain events in October and November created access difficulties in and around the bulk sample mining area before resuming earlier this month.

While bulk sampling has yet to expose the orebody, it has already yielded a pleasant surprise when excavation work uncovered an estimated 1m to 2m of ancient river gravels at a depth of about 5m that were found to contain visible gold when samples were panned.

This layer was not recognised by previous reverse circulation drilling and represents the potential to add valuable ounces to not just the bulk sample but to future open pit mining operations.

As such, this material will be stockpiled separately and systematically sampled.

Kat Gap and the Forrestania Gold Project

Kat Gap currently has an Inferred resource of 975,722t grading 2.96g/t gold, making it the highest grade part of the broader Forrestania Gold Project, which has an overall resource of almost 8Mt grading 1.5g/t gold – or 403,906oz of contained gold.

However, the company has every reason to believe that there is more gold to be found at Kat Gap given that deep drilling has intersected several zones of high-grade gold mineralisation down plunge and along strike from previous results.

Infill drilling has also yielded a bonanza grade interval of 0.5m grading 592g/t gold within a broader 10m interval at a very respectable 40.54g/t gold.

Classic plans to continue follow-up RC drilling to test the down plunge extent of the high-grade gold mineralisation below the existing shallow near surface gold mineralisation on the granite-greenstone contact.

It will also conduct shallow RC drilling programs under the best areas of the large auger soil gold anomaly out in the granite.

This article was developed in collaboration with Classic Minerals, 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.