New Talisman Gold Mines Ltd (ASX:NTL, NZX:NTL) has been one of the best performing stocks on the ASX during 2017.
The last traded price around $0.021 is four-times higher than the start of the year, with a peak of $0.028, with the positive re-rating being driven by the company's gold resource upgrades.
Shares in New Talisman are expected to again head higher today following another substantial upgrade to its gold resources.
The upgrade comes after the completion of the third module pertaining to the Talisman Deeps project in the Coromandel region of New Zealand.
This module completes the initial resource upgrade of the Maria Vein Deeps zones.
Analysis of the Crown and Mystery Modules to comply with JORC 2012 reporting standards has commenced and is anticipated to take three months.
Resource modelling of the Talisman and Bonanza Zones has resulted in quantifying of an Inferred resource of 73,601 gold ounce equivalent at a grade of 23.64g/t gold equivalent.
This brings the total JORC 2012 Resource for the Maria vein to 427,600 gold ounces equivalent.
Matthew Hill, chief executive officer, commented:
"The final module for the first series of JORC 2012 forming Talisman deeps has clearly demonstrated the consistency of world class grades at Talisman which are amongst the world’s highest.
"The high level of international and local interest from both an investor level and project level has been tremendous.
"Whilst we continue to finalise analysis on the remaining resource blocks to upgrade all resources to JORC 2012 our primary focus is completion of prospecting and forging ahead into the extraction phase which is expected to commence in December."
What are gold equivalents
Gold equivalents have been used as the historic data is expressed in bullion values.
These have been converted to gold equivalents based on the gold price during the main historic mining period to 1919 where gold price was a constant £4.25 or US$20.67.
All more recent exploration data has been converted to gold equivalents at the same metal prices for consistency of resource estimation and reporting.
Analysis
The latest resource upgrade for the Talisman Mine presents an opportunity to expand operations, and the grade will attract interest from both domestic and international investors.
Bulk sampling will begin in December.