Astral Resources NL (ASX:AAR) identified high-grade gold at the Mandilla Project in WA this week. For more on this, managing director, Marc Ducler, joined Proactive.
Highlights
- Astral Resources is progressing infill drilling at the Theia deposit, part of the Mandilla Gold Project near Kalgoorlie.
- The drilling returned high-grade intercepts including:
- 14m at 7 g/t gold
- 40m at 4 g/t gold
- 24m at 2 g/t gold
- These results are significantly above the existing resource grade of 1.1 g/t.
- The current infill program uses a 12x12m drill spacing aimed at de-risking the project ahead of production.
- Three rigs are currently on site: two for infill and pre-collar work, one for diamond drilling.
- Diamond drilling is testing the 230 shear and a potential parallel shear east of Theia.
- Infill drilling is expected to complete in 2–3 weeks; diamond drilling will likely continue until mid-December.
- Astral is using cost-effective drilling approaches to manage exploration costs.
Proactive: You're the bearer of good news. There have been multiple announcements, one after the other, and they’re all pretty solid.
Marc Ducler: Yeah, we’re going very, very well. I mean, it's a pretty strong gold price. Every morning you wake up, it's set up another $50. So it's a great time to be running a gold developing company in Australia, that’s for sure.
Proactive: 100%. And the Theia deposit we're talking about is in focus for investors this morning. What's been found so far out there?
Marc Ducler: Well look, the Theia deposit is part of our 100%-owned Mandilla Gold Project. There’s 1.2 million ounces at Theia, and we’re now drilling up the first stage — a 12-by-12 metre program. This is about us de-risking the project, making sure we are extremely confident as we move this project into production.
We’re halfway through the program now, and the infill results continue to support our mineral resource estimate. If anything, there appears to be some upside to the resource grade. We’re getting results like 14 metres at 7 grams, 40 metres at 4 grams, 24 metres at 2 grams — all well above the resource grade, which is 1.1 grams for Theia. So it’s certainly shaping up well so far.
Proactive: Your next round of diamond drilling is underway as you’ve informed the market. Three rigs are currently operating at Mandilla. What’s the timeline looking like over the coming weeks?
Marc Ducler: The infill assay program should be complete in the next two to three weeks. We’ve got another RC rig doing some pre-collar drilling to reduce costs. Your RC drilling is around $70 a metre, but diamond drilling is about $200 a metre — so we only use diamond core for the parts of the hole we really need.
Once the infill is done, one RC rig will move to phase four, and diamond drilling will probably continue through to mid-December.
The diamond rig is currently testing the 230 shear — a high-grade shear inside Theia — and also looking at the potential for a parallel shear to the east. It’s still within the open-pit footprint but could be a potential depth extension.
Proactive: Certainly lots to keep investors quite busy. We’ll check in with you in the coming weeks to see where things are at Mandilla. This was Astral’s managing director Marc Ducler — good to see you.
Marc Ducler: Cheers. Thanks very much.