Barton Gold Holdings Ltd (ASX:BGD, OTCQB:BGDFF, FRA:BGD3) has started an approximate 8,000-metre reverse circulation (RC) drilling program at its Challenger Gold Project in South Australia, with work focused on defining open pit material for an initial Stage 1 development case under its Definitive Feasibility Study (DFS).
The campaign is targeting the Challenger Main and Challenger West open pits, along with additional open pit targets at Challenger South-Southwest and Challenger 3.
The drilling is aimed at upgrading existing open pit mineralisation and testing new near-surface targets for conversion into JORC (2012) Indicated Resources, with the broader objective of supporting Ore Reserve definition through the ongoing DFS.
The RC program is running alongside an approximate 1,490-metre diamond drilling campaign, which is designed to provide geotechnical information and metallurgical samples for pit design and optimisation.
Together, the two programs are intended to underpin a simplified Stage 1 operating plan at Challenger.
“Recent extreme rains have proved a challenge across outback South Australia, but our exploration team has worked miracles to rebuild regional access roads and keep drilling moving at pace across all Barton development programs," Barton MD Alexander Scanlon said.
“Challenger’s considerable on-pit and near-surface gold mineralisation, adjacent to our existing Central Gawler Mill, provides an ideal pathway for an initial ‘baseline’ operation which underwrites a restart with a reduced risk profile while maximising development optionality for the Challenger underground mine, Tarcoola, Tolmer and Wudinna.”
Stage 1 plan designed as lower-risk restart pathway
That DFS objective is centred on modelling a viable three-to-four-year baseline operation using historical higher-grade tailings from tailings storage facility 1 and limited near-surface material, without disturbing the historic high-grade underground mine, its mineralisation or associated infrastructure access.
Barton sees that approach as a lower-risk pathway to restarting the Central Gawler Mill, while deferring the higher-cost and more technically complex underground mining component to a later stage.
The company said this would also preserve broader development flexibility across its regional asset base, with the mill potentially able to process material from projects including Tarcoola, Wudinna and the Tolmer silver prospect in future.
The drilling follows Barton’s September 2025 Challenger Mineral Resource Estimate upgrade to 313,000 ounces of gold from 10.6 million tonnes at 0.92 g/t gold. The company noted that almost all of this mineralisation sits in, on, or adjacent to existing serviceable open pit and underground development, close to the Central Gawler Mill.
Barton is targeting JORC Ore Reserves and completion of its Stage 1 DFS in H2 CY2026.