Nova Minerals has justified last week’s trading halt by returning more thick intercepts of exceptional high-grade gold from surface at the RPM North Deposit.

Highlights from (Nova’s (ASX:NVA) latest batch of assays include 140m at 6.5 grams per tonne of gold (g/t) from 44m, including 87m at 10.1g/t gold and 24m at 24.7 g/t gold.

The samples from the flagship Estelle Gold Project in Alaska’s rich Tintina Gold Belt come from the same drill hole that yielded grades of up to 1,330g/t and visible gold in late June.

The latest assays also back up previous results, including 132m at 10.1g/t, that confirm continuity of the high-grade gold zone from surface down to the depth of more than 250m tested so far.

Average grades returned from the two drill holes announced are 3.6 g/t gold over 260m and 1.9g/t gold over 199m from surface, with mineralization still open.

Infill and step-out drilling therefore continues to prove up the +2g/t material in the existing 1.5Mozs at 2.0g/t Inferred resource to the higher confidence Indicated category. The results will be incorporated into the Phase 2 Scoping Study.

Trending upwards

With an already indicated and inferred resource of 9.6Moz, the Estelle Gold Trend is on track for more ounces to be added this year.

It’s therefore close to joining the +10Moz explorers club in Alaska and makes it already bigger than projects such as De Grey Mining’s (ASX:DEG) highly touted Hemi deposit in WA.

Nova has already defined the two large Korbel and RPM deposits, along the 35km corridor in the Tintina gold province – one of the world’s most prolific belts and the site of an historic gold rush.

The company has also identified another 19 prospects between those two deposits.

Drilling at RPM is ongoing with two rigs at RPM North and one rig at RPM South as Nova continues its largest drilling program yet at Estelle, with up to 50,000m planned over this year.

High quality data

Initial observations from drilling now being conducted at RPM South are very encouraging, with broad zones of mineralization and features supporting a link with the high-grade zone encountered at RPM North.

RPM North Section 501950mE showing continuity of mineralization.

High quality data from the drilling program is being collated and interpreted to provide greater deposit knowledge.

These insights are offering up invaluable information for developing further targets for the ongoing exploration programs within the RPM area as well as the greater Estelle Gold Trend.

“The RPM Deposit continues to deliver more thick intercepts of exceptionally high-grade gold., Nova CEO, Mr Chritopher Gerteisen said.

These latest assay results confirm continuity and validate broad shallow zones of particularly high-grade gold mineralization from surface within the much larger and broader RPM gold system.

“We will report further drill results as they are received from the lab for the ongoing 2022 Estelle Gold Project drilling programs and remain on track to deliver the Phase 2 Scoping Study in the near term,” Gerteisen said.

Following that, the plan is to proceed into the PFS, which aims to increase the gold production schedule and NPV significantly, as we continue on our path towards commercial production.”

This article was developed in collaboration with Nova 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.