New Age Exploration starts drilling Lammerlaw gold-antimony asset

• New Age Exploration starts drilling at the Lammerlaw project in New Zealand
• Five of nine high priority targets will be drill tested in the first phase of the campaign
• Results will then guide the second phase

Special Report: New Age Exploration’s Lammerlaw permit is being drill tested via a two-phase campaign over two types of conceptual targets which could relate to gold, arsenic, antimony or tungsten mineralisation.

The New Zealand project hosts several west-northwest mineralised zones sub-parallel to foliation in schist and airborne geophysical trends.

These 4km long anomalies were identified during soil sampling and at historical workings.

Lammerlaw is primarily covered by a layer of loess (windblown silt), typically 1-5m deep, that sits on a thin zone of weathered schist and conceals mineralisation.

Hand augers are used for soil sampling to penetrate the loess, which means that most soil anomalies are buried and cannot be found by surface sampling.

The thin zone of weathered schist also indicate that the supergene mineralisation is not well developed.

Historical Lammerlaw gold prospectivity  

New Age Exploration (ASX:NAE) acquired the Lammerlaw permit in Otago New Zealand in December 2019 after winning a competitive Newly Available acreage process.

The permit covers 265km2 of ground in the Lammerlaw ranges, where geological data points to Macraes-style mineralisation with 1km gold anomalies, bearing similarities to the gold mine which has produced over 5Moz since opening in 1990.

Lammerlaw also contains the historically mined Bella Lode, where gold was mined during the late 1800s with an average grade of 15g/t before the mine closed in 1901.

Previous antimony-targeted exploration has also revealed three mineralised trends with rock chip samples of >30% antimony.

Key step forward

NAE executive director Joshua Wellisch said the company was excited to begin drilling the asset.

“Historical mining and modern exploration have highlighted the strong potential for high-grade gold and antimony mineralisation,” he said.

“This drill program is a key step in advancing the project and unlocking value for our shareholders.”

This article was developed in collaboration with New Age Exploration, 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.