Ora Banda Mining spots potential large-scale gold system during Davyhurst drilling

• OBM spots potential large gold system at Round Dam Trend at Davyhurst project
• Gold hits of up to 20.6g/t highlight open pit and underground potential
• The company plans to conduct more follow up drilling

Special Report: Ora Banda Mining says exploration drilling at Round Dam Trend at its Davyhurst mine has flagged the potential for a large-scale system with both open pit and underground prospectivity.

Round Dam is a north-south strike mineralised trend, running from Waihi (3.5km from the Davyhurst Mill) to Salmon Gums, 17km to the south.

The company has identified up to six subparallel gold lodes along this trend, revealing a new search window previously unrecognised from historical drilling, which was only focused on one or two lodes in isolation.

So far, ~9,500m of the phase 1, 62,000m drilling program has returned high-grade intervals including:

• 8m at 20.6g/t including. 3m at 41.7g/t;
• 2m at 32.4g/t including 1m at 57.1g/t;
• 5m at 11g/t including 2m at 23.1g/t;
• 3m at 12g/t including 2m at 17.5g/t; and
• 7m at 5g/t including 1m at 20.3g/t.

Ora Banda Mining (ASX:OBM) says the known gold mineralisation at Round Dam currently remains open at depth and along strike, both of which will be the subject of further exploration.

The company will spend $73 million in FY26 to explore seven major mineralised trends that exist on its tenure.

Potentially large multi-lode system

The drill program at Round Dam forms part of a large exploration campaign to expand the company’s mineral resource base and ore reserve position by testing a highly prospective 140km of continuous strike.

“This is an outstanding start to a large exploration program focused on expanding the current open pit and future underground mining potential of the Round Dam Trend,” MD Luke Creagh said.

“Credit goes to our geology team who reinterpreted the mineralisation system and identified that multiple, subparallel and proximal gold lodes exist over significant strike.

“Historically, exploration only focussed on one or two lodes in isolation, and we believe by expanding the drilling over the combined multi-lode system there is potential to materially enhance and expand the scale of the deposits.

“The Round Dam Trend is one of seven major trends that we are exploring as part of our $73 million exploration budget in FY26.

“Although it remains very early days, we are looking forward to seeing what the full results from the initial Phase 1, 62,000-metre program will deliver.”

Notably, fund-management group Argonaut released a research note for Ora Banda today maintaining a BUY rating and price target of A$1.10 based on these results.

“OBM is completing a 62,000m drill program at Round Dam, which we expect will result in further high-grade hits being return,” Argonaut executive director and head of research Hayden Bairstow said.

“We do not currently incorporate any material being mined from Round Dam in our base case production forecasts for OBM.”

This article was developed in collaboration with Ora Banda Mining, 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.