Ora Banda’s Sand King grows in stature as drilling expands treasury with more high-grade gold

• Drilling hits high grades of up to 18.7m at 8.9g/t gold ~300m north of current Sand King mine plan
• Results to date clearly demonstrate the mine has significantly more gold reserves than previous 55,000oz estimate
• Sand King is growing from a supporting act to a meaningful, long-term source of ore feed

Special Report: Ora Banda Mining has every reason to expect a boost to the mining inventory at its Sand King underground mine after step-out drilling returned thick intersections of high-grade gold.

The WA mine’s mineralisation footprint was expanded by a large step-out hole and wedge hole (SKDD25030) that were drilled 300m to the north of the current life of mine plan.

Assays returned results of 14.3m grading 5.3g/t gold from a down-hole depth of 502m and 18.7m at 8.9/t from 490m including 8.7m at 8.7g/t and 8.8m at 10.4g/t separated by 1.2m of core loss respectively.

Ora Banda Mining (ASX:OBM) adds the vertical separation between the parent and wedge hole is 70 vertical metres, with mineralisation considered to be open in all directions with further follow-up drilling planned.

Lending further support to the possibility of mineralisation extending north of the LOM plan, underground resource drilling has intersected multiple economic lodes 50 metres to its north with notable assays such as 24.2m at 4.4g/t, 5.6m at 5g/t and 1.7m at 27.7g/t in hole SKUGRD25021.

Ongoing success of the cash-generating company’s extensional and infill resource drilling has already increased the mining inventory, compared to the LOM plan, and supports an independent southern decline being developed.

Canaccord Genuity certainly thinks that OBM is on the right track with the broker’s modelling of some of the exploration success to date expected to deliver a two-year boost to Sand King’s life.

“We started the Sand King underground mine on a reserve of 55,000 oz and our initial thinking was that it would be a support play to our main underground operation at Riverina,” managing director Luke Creagh said.

“However, these remarkable hits from step-out drilling, coupled with consistent resource infill drilling intercepts, show that Sand King Underground is bigger than we first thought and that the tenor of the mineralisation is potentially higher than initially expected.

“Drilling is continuing at Sand King, and as its footprint grows, we will continue to adjust our mine planning, because currently the deposit looks to be shaping as a meaningful, long-term feed source for our Davyhurst mill.”

Sand King drilling

OBM is currently progressing surface and underground exploration, resource definition and infill drilling campaign at the Sand King underground mine.

To date, it has drilled nine of the 24 planned surface holes and received assays identifying high-grade gold mineralisation beyond and below the existing LOM plan from six of them.

Diamond hole SKDD25030 had intersected the high-grade gold mineralisation at a depth of about 450m below surface and was followed with a wedge hole that intersected similar mineralisation.

Notably, the wedge intercept is ~70m above the parent intercept, highlighting a new and potentially extensive exploration area.

Logging of the core in these holes indicates the mineralisation is at the intersection of geological features that are generally known to deliver high-grade gold results.

Meanwhile, the underground resource drilling has identified significant further lateral extent of mineralisation north of the orebody than previously thought.

It also indicates that a large, untested mineralised corridor of over 300m is present between holes SKDD25030 and SKUGRD25021.

Adding further interest, grade control drilling has identified localised high-grade zones that were not identified in historical resource definition drilling, indicating there’s potential for grade upside at Sand King.

The results validate OBM’s decision to commit to its 4338 drill platform early in the mine life and before the first level. The company has managed to transform the eastern lodes stopes from isolated pockets, which were set aside in the final investment decision, into a continuous and economic corridor.

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.