Special Report: A highly anticipated drilling campaign could drive Moho’s recent Empress Spring gold and base metals discovery into the spotlight.

It’s well established that for explorers, a major discovery can deliver huge share price multiples.

Just before the onset of the wet season late last year, newly listed explorer Moho Resources (ASX:MOH) made a promising gold discovery in north Queensland at a project called Empress Springs, part of a joint venture with resources giant Independence Group (ASX:IGO).

At the time the explorer was following a geophysical target with wide-spaced reconnaissance aircore drilling along a track and hit significant gold and base metal mineralisation at the Arrowhead prospect below shallow cover.

Discovery hole ESA023 recorded 10m averaging 1.08 g/t gold just 44m from surface, including 2m @ 2.1 g/t gold, 2.5 g/t silver, 0.26% zinc, 0.14% lead at 50m.

Importantly, drilling ended in mineralisation.

“We’ve drilled 87 holes on an area of 773 sq km and we actually managed to hit something,” Moho’s Ralph Winter told Stockhead.

“It’s quite literally a needle in a haystack. We weren’t really expecting to hit the kind of mineralisation we did hit at that point. It’s very encouraging from our point of view.

“It shows we could be sitting on a very large mineralising system here.”

It also represents a virgin gold and base metals discovery in an emerging minerals province.

Moho says there has been no previous drilling for gold and base metals in the Empress Springs area, yet it is right near the historical Croydon goldfield that produced 1.2 million ounces of gold.

Following a review of the maiden drilling results by world-renown geologist Dr Jon Hronsky, Moho applied for an additional 2000 square kilometres around the North Queensland gold project, giving the Company first mover status into this highly prospect yet untested area.

And several other explorers have followed suit.

Winter said that both Metallica Minerals (ASX:MLM) and Sipa Resources (ASX:SRI) pegged additional ground nearby right after Moho did. Majors AngloGold Ashanti (ASX:AGG) and South32 (ASX:S32) also have projects in the region.

“There’s a lot of renewed interest in the area as a result of Moho’s success to date,” he said.

Proposed RC Drillholes and heritage clearance area, Arrowhead Prospect. (Supplied)

Hit the ground drilling

This week, a new 2500m drilling campaign will test the extent of gold and base metal mineralisation down to about 100m vertical depth at Arrowhead.

Then in June, Moho will kick off an extensive 7000m reconnaissance air core program to test the targets not explored in 2018.

The RC drilling program is expected to take about two weeks to complete.

But instead of waiting weeks for lab assay results, Moho will get indicative daily results using a portable XRF analyser, based on the correlation between the gold and base metal results in last years drill program.

This gives the company flexibility to increase the number and depth of holes if strong base metal anomalism is detected.

It should also result in fewer assays of non-mineralised samples, and a faster turnaround of critical gold results through the lab, Moho says.

This story was developed in collaboration with Moho Resources, 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.

 

Featured Companies

You might be interested in