Following what it calls a highly successful drilling campaign that establishes Mt York as an “extremely large” shallow gold deposit, Kairos Minerals Ltd (ASX:KAI, OTCQB:KAIFF) has increased its mineral resource estimate (MRE) for the fully owned Western Australian gold play by almost half.
The updated model incorporates the company’s 2022 drilling – which consisted of 11,014 metres of reverse circulation (RC) and diamond drilling – as well as new bulk density values of mineralised banded iron formation (BIF) host rock.
Estimate increases 500,000 ounces
The estimate has increased the resource by 500,000 ounces so that it now stands at 49.24 million tonnes at 1.02 g/t gold for 1.62 million ounces.
It covers the Main Trend (Main Hill, Breccia Hill and Gossan Hill) and two satellite deposits, Iron Stirrup and Old Faithful, some 5 and 7 kilometres north-northeast of Main Trend respectively.
The 3-kilometre-long Main Trend gold resource increases 54% from 900,000 ounces to 1.39 million ounces – it’s constrained to 350 metres of vertical depth, though it remains open in other directions.
The MRE includes a higher-grade component of 21 million tonnes at 1.5 g/t containing 1 million ounces.
The company believes there is outstanding growth potential at the project, with numerous prospects yet to be investigated, including Gilt Dragon, where historical drilling points to results such as 19 metres at 1.31 g/t gold from 1 metre including 5 metres at 3.19 g/t from 4 metres.
Quality exploration targets
The aim is to define a robust pipeline of quality exploration targets that will guide efforts to discover significant shallow gold mineralisation.
“To add half a million ounces in just eight months is an outstanding result which reflects the quality and ongoing growth potential of Mt York,” Kairos managing director Dr Peter Turner said.
“At 1.6 million ounces, Mt York now has genuine scale right in the heart of one of the world’s most desirable mining regions.
“The mineralisation along the Main Trend remains open and we have numerous highly promising prospects to test.
“We will continue to focus on drilling our pipeline of untested soil anomalies in a bid to grow the resource while undertaking economic studies on an open pit operation.”
What’s next?
The exploration team at Kairos has identified numerous, highly-promising opportunities for further resource growth beyond the three deposits included in the MRE – it will continue to work on refining those with target generation and ranking.
In addition, open pit optimisation studies are underway to focus on project economics under different processing rates and gold price scenarios, along with metallurgical test-work on drill core to determine the optimal process route.
Meanwhile, construction continues apace at the Mt York exploration camp and stakeholder negotiations are underway to secure the mining lease.