North Stawell Minerals achieves ounce, grade, confidence boost at Wildwood

North Stawell Minerals decision to revisit the Wildwood prospect is delivering early on, with over half the resource now in the higher confidence indicated category and a significant boost to the grade and ounces.

North Stawell Minerals (ASX:NSM) has released an updated resource for its Wildwood prospect of 1.2 million tonnes at 2.4 grams per tonne (g/t) for 87,300oz of contained gold.

The update comes less than a week after the company announced drilling had uncovered high grade gold, along with visible gold, at Wildwood – one of several potential repeats of the multi-million-ounce Stawell mine.

The updated resource includes a 59% increase in contained ounces, a 20% increase in grade and 51% of the resource is now classified as indicated.

Mineral resources are categorised in order of increasing geological confidence from inferred to indicated to measured.

When resources are bumped up into the indicated category it means there is sufficient information on geology and grade continuity to support mine planning and these resources can be converted to a reserve.

“The updated mineral resource at Wildwood is a significant result for NSM, reinvigorating the deposit and its structural position as one of five priority targets for future work,” CEO Russell Krause said.

These five targets are Wildwood, Darlington, Caledonia, Forsaken and Challenger.

The larger and higher-grade resource was the result of a review and rebuild of the geology and mineralisation, the inclusion of new drilling, a comprehensive data review, and an increased focus on depth potential.

The resource includes three deposits – Maslin, Clontarf and Trinity – that occur as plunging shoots in embayments on the margins of the 3.5km long Wildwood Basalt, which is a similar structural control to the 5Moz Stawell gold mine located nearby to the north of NSM’s ground.

NSM said the three recent diamond drill holes added significant extension and grade to down-plunge extensions of the Maslin deposit.

These holes returned top gold intercepts of 5.6m at 8.72g/t from 201.1m; 10.05m at 3.88g/t from 247.85m including 7m at 5.3g/t from 250.9m; 9.98m at 1.83g/t from 339.85m; 2.05m at 3.58g/t from 342.5m; and 2.5m at 2.77g/t from 292.5m.

The mineralisation occurs from immediately beneath a blanket of unmineralised Murray Basin sedimentary cover.

“The recent successful down-plunge gold intercepts also levered off the updated interpretations and have been included in the mineral resource estimate, extending the Maslin deposit down plunge to the northwest,” Krause explained.

“A key characteristic of Stawell-type mineralisation is its vertical continuity as mineralised shoots that interconnect multiple mineralisation styles to 1,600m vertical depth.

“The updated Wildwood mineral resource forms a strong foundation for further work around Wildwood to identify additional mineralisation potential, down-plunge and elsewhere on the Basalt dome.”

This article was developed in collaboration with North Stawell 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.