Aerial view of the Nagambie mine site.Nagambie Resources (ASX: NAG) has identified four gold targets in a 2.7km cluster at its wholly-owned Nagambie project area after carrying out a 3D induced polarisation geophysics survey of the project area in central Victoria.
The survey has revealed four underground sulphide targets near the historic Nagambie mine, with the new targets including Nagambie, Nagambie North, Cahill and Racecourse.
Cahill, which is 1.5km north of the Nagambie mine, was the most intense anomaly from the survey and starts about 100m below the surface.
Commenting on the discovery Nagambie Resources chairman Mike Trumbull said it represented a “quantum advance” in the company’s gold exploration efforts.
“The sulphide cluster clearly appears to result from the various east-west striking surface thrusts all intersecting the Nagambie north-west, striking, gravity-indicated, deep crustal fault,” Mr Trumbull said.
He said the company would begin its first drill hole on its new targets this week.
“We are confident of now being able to locate many more sulphide clusters within our tenements which cover over 2,000 square kilometres and encompass all the 10 significant gravity-indicated crustal faults in the Waranga Province,” Mr Trumbull added.
Perseverance Mining produced about 180,000 ounces of surface oxide gold from two open pits in the project area during the 1990s; however, the company had not identified the recently discovered buried sulphide targets.
Additionally, the historic Nagambie mine has only been drill tested to 150m below the pit and the company hopes the gold grades increase at depth similarly to Kirkland Lake Gold’s (ASX: KLA) nearby Fosterville gold mine.
Innovative avenues to generate revenue
In addition to its focus for discovering and developing open pit and underground gold deposits, Nagambie plans to fill the project’s former mining pits with waste from the Melbourne Metro rail tunnel.
The pits have been closed for more than two decades and are about 900m long and 50m deep and filled with salt water, which is alkaline.
Nagambie will dump the potentially acidic waste into it’s the alkaline pits and safely store the waste under water.
The theory is under water storage is preferred for the Melbourne soil waste to prevent it oxidising.
Another interesting avenue Nagambie has evaluated for bringing in revenue is dry screening overburden material to create coarse aggregate material.
The Nagambie mine alone has more than 7mt of overburden material, which the company believes could be screened to develop coarse aggregate.
Nagambie plans to produce four sizes of aggregates and coarse sand from Nagambie overburden to sell to concrete manufacturers in Victoria.
Nagambie’s share price lifted more than 7% to reach A$0.285 in early afternoon trade.
