Warriedar Resources brightened the start of this week with a reverse-circulation (RC) drill hit of 4m at 14.49 grams per tonne gold from 188m from its 2.3km-long Ricciardo gold deposit within the company’s Golden Range project in Western Australia’s Murchison region.
Management confirmed the launch of its 2024 drilling activities on February 28, outlining 3000m of RC work at Ricciardo aimed at extending known high-grade shoots and adding high-grade ounces, in addition to step-out drilling to test for interpreted new high-grade shoots.
It was all in a bid to improve its confidence in a mineral resource estimate for Ricciardo of 8.7 million tonnes at 1.7g/t gold for a contained 476,000 ounces. And the plan is clearly starting to bear fruit.
The southern bookend to the Golden Range project is the historic Rothsay mine, just a few kilometres south of and on strike from Warriedar’s ground. The northern bookend is 29Metals’ world-class Golden Grove mine and processing mill, along with its 128.3-million-tonne volcanogenic-hosted massive sulphide (VHMS) resource.
Most significantly, Golden Grove’s host sequence continues south straight into Warriedar’s ground, which it acquired from DC Mines in mid-February last year.
The 804-square-kilometre acquisition came with a mineral resource estimate of 19.2 million tonnes at 1.5g/t gold for 945,000 ounces, so the company instantly doubled its total resource position to just under 2 million ounces. The company also picked up the operation’s mine infrastructure, comprising an 800,000 tonne per annum plant, 156-man camp, ancillary facilities and grid power.
Warriedar is clearly following a strategy known in the mining industry as, “exploring in the shadow of the headframe”, with decades of historic data assisting in orientation. It is a simple, proven strategy that could at times also be called, “standing on the shoulders of giants”.
WA8 Price at posting:
5.7¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
