Record quarter just the start for gold play Navarre

The March quarter was the busiest in Navarre’s (ASX:NML) history, with seven rigs drilling 26,000m across the company’s exciting portfolio of Victorian gold projects.

This culminated in the announcement of a maiden resource of 304,300oz – plus an additional exploration target of between 280,000oz to 420,000oz — at the Resolution and Adventure prospects, part of the Stawell Corridor gold project.

“The key highlight of the quarter was the announcement of a maiden mineral resource and associated exploration targets, establishing both the Resolution and Adventure prospects as quality gold deposits with outstanding economic potential,” Navarre managing director Ian Holland says.

“The maiden mineral resource is the first instalment of what we believe will be a growing resource base and the first step in establishing the Stawell Corridor gold project as an emerging gold producing camp in western Victoria.”

An additional 2,500 metre diamond drilling program has kicked off at Adventure Lode aimed at converting the exploration target to additional resources.

Regional success

Regional drilling across Navarre’s broader portfolio is also generating exciting results.

At ‘Morning Bill’ on Navarre’s Glenlyle tenement, shallow air-core drilling revealed a strongly mineralised 1,000m by 400m footprint containing highly anomalous gold, silver, lead and zinc.

“This near surface mineralisation is concealed below a veneer of younger cover rocks and is interpreted to represent potential epithermal-style mineralisation above a deeper porphyry target,” Holland says.

“Peak silver assays of 301 g/t and gold of 3.1 g/t were intersected during the quarter. This mineralisation remains open along strike and at depth and is now subject to a 2,000 metre diamond drilling program.”

The first results from air-core drilling on Navarre’s recently granted exploration licence over the historic, high grade 400,000oz St Arnaud Goldfield also yielded strong, near surface gold assays.

“This drilling is testing the potential for economic levels of gold mineralisation around the historic workings in conjunction with a deeper program of diamond core drilling following up rich legacy drill hits such as one metre at 1,174 grams per tonne gold beneath the old New Bendigo Mine,” Holland says.

A 3,400m regional air-core (AC) drilling campaign completed at Langi Logan enhanced the potential scale of this gold system.

Meanwhile, first drilling at Jubilee Mine since its closure in 1913 returned strongly anomalous gold in weathered basement rocks above three geophysical anomalies — confirming the potential for repetitions and extensions of the high-grade Jubilee quartz reef.

Most recently, drilling at the Tandarra Gold Joint Venture (Navarre 49%) hit high grade gold up to 412g/t.

Drilling is ongoing across Glenlyle, St Arnaud and Tandarra, the company says.

A strengthened management team

Navarre is now gearing up to become a mine developer, strengthening its management team with several key appointments.

New chief financial officer Paul Hissey has +20 years of technical, financial and market experience, firstly as a geologist before a transition to capital markets.

For the past 10 years, Paul has been a highly respected research analyst with global investment banks RBC and Goldman Sachs. During this time he has gained extensive capital markets experience and investor relationships “which will be invaluable to the continued growth of Navarre”, the company says.

This article was developed in collaboration with Navarre, 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.