Riversgold Ltd is about to get the drill spinning at the Northern Zone Gold Project south of Kalgoorlie in Western Australia as part of its 2025 strategy to “drill baby drill”, according to chairman David Lenigas.
A drilling contractor has been booked and will mobilise to the site in March 2025 to start the next phase of drilling to target and extend previous higher-grade intercepts.
The plan is to do this via a series of SW-NE orientated extensional lines using nominal 20-metre spacing.
In parallel, the Mining Lease application M25/389 has been submitted to the WA Department of Energy, Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety (DEMIRS) to convert Northern Zone to a Mining Lease.
Riversgold said it was important to convert this tenement to a mining lease to facilitate an operational situation if the economics determined this.
Start imminent
Lenigas said: “Northern Zone continues to deliver significant, shallow gold intercepts over an increasing footprint and we are excited with the imminent start of our 2025 drilling campaign.
"The recent submission to convert the project to a mining lease signifies our commitment and belief in this rapidly maturing project.
"The recent sets of significant high-grade gold assays at Northern Zone from our 2024 drilling, have continued to expand the gold mineralised footprint of the porphyry over a larger area and confirms the presence of a significant gold system, that is located just 25 kilometres east of Kalgoorlie, Western Australia.
"The Australian dollar gold price has passed $4,500/ounce, which bodes well for this exciting project.
"Drill baby drill, as President Trump would say, is our plan for 2025 here with this elevated gold price and this project gets bigger and more exciting the more we drill.”
Strong previous results
The Northern Zone Porphyry Intrusive Hosted Gold Project is 25 kilometres east of the Kalgoorlie Super Pit.
Results from aircore drilling to date include:
- 8 metres at 4.86 g/t gold from 34 metres;
- 7 metres at 4.07 g/t from 48 metres;
- 4 metres at 7.47 g/t from 49 metres;
- 5 metres at 12.27 g/t from 32 metres; and
- 16 metres at 4.69 g/t from 30 metres.
Reverse circulation (RC) has returned broad results including:
- 154 metres at 0.58 g/t gold from 98 metres; and
- 330 metres at 0.49 g/t from 30 metres including 54.79 metres at 1.15 g/t from 213 metres.
Diamond drilling has also pointed to the potential, returning 110 metres at 0.6 g/t gold from 208 metres.
Gold grade model
All historical and recent drilling at the Northern Zone Project has been uploaded into Leapfrog software and has enabled the company to generate a gold grade model.
This dynamic model has informed and guided the upcoming 2025 drilling campaign.
Gold mineralisation remains open in multiple directions and will require further modelling and drill testing as the project matures