“We have to drill where the gold is, not where we want it to be,” says Shaun Bunn, managing director of Empire Metals Ltd (AIM:EEE) (AIM:EEE), to explain a change in exploration tack for the Aim-listed junior.
Empire announced this morning that it was re-drawing its plans for the Eclipse project near Kalgoorlie in Western Australia after analysing the results of an intensive year-long drilling programme at the deposit.
Instead of an open-pit designed to generate early cash flow, the plan now is to explore deeper to find the higher-grade deposits and develop a single, but much more substantial mine.
There was a risk of sterilising those higher-quality deposits by adopting the open pit route, Bunn says.
Looking at the data it was a “high-risk low reward” option, he adds hence the change in approach.
Results from the drilling indicated there remain significant areas that required further exploration.
In between the Jack's Dream prospect and Eclipse for instance, and along strike of the new discovery at Twin Shaft, to test how these may be linked to the Eclipse lode.
Of the 111 RC holes drilled during the programme, 40 intercepted significant gold intercepts above a cut-off grade of 1.3 g/t gold, said Empire’s statement.
However, of these only eight holes reported significant gold intercepts within the completely oxidised zone, lying within 30m of surface.
These intercepts were largely around the mine workings at the Eclipse shaft and were partially impacted by old stopes for the former mine located there.
Near-surface drilling along strike from the Eclipse shaft did not identify significant gold mineralisation.
Bunn says Empire learnt a lot from the drill programme about both the nature of the mineralisation and the lode and he remains confident over the opportunity, but extra drilling will help understand it even better.
Most of the exploration over the past year was in the shallow oxide deposits, he adds, but the higher grades came from the deeper intercepts and Bunn is confident as the drilling goes down further it will find where the high-grade lodes lie.
“There is no point drilling along strike if it won’t generate anything.”
Eclipse is not the only focus, exploration has just got underway at the Menzies project also in Western Australia.
The geology here is different to Eclipse, says Bunn, and more akin to a traditional greenstone belt but the area has thrown up large veins in the past and again he is optimistic of finding high-grade targets.
In short, more drilling is the plan for the next few months, he adds, and after that an assessment and probably more acquisitions in both areas to increase the size and potential in both addresses.