Vango Mining Ltd (ASX:VAN) has provided an update on its 15,000-metre drilling campaign at Marymia Gold Project in WA’s Mid-West, with nine of 11 open pits now completed.
When Proactive last covered Vango in late July, it had completed only 14 holes for 2,465 metres, illustrating the progress Vango made throughout August.
The drilling program has been designed to boost the company’s existing 1.02-million-ounce at 3 g/t gold resource at Marymia, with the 11 priority open pits not currently part of that figure.
Initial assessment “highly encouraging”
Vango chairman Bruce McInnes said the drilling program was expected to add significant near-surface resources amenable to open pit mining future mining operation at the Marymia project.
“We are highly encouraged by its initial assessment of the drilling,” he said. “Drilling has intersected veining and alteration associated with mineralisation across multiple zones, in all the pit targets drilled to date.
“We plan to undertake a minimum of 15,000 metres of reverse circulation (RC) drilling in this campaign, with the ability to expand the campaign subject to results.
“The program is designed to test for depth and strike extensions of the open pit targets, which were previously mined solely from near-surface oxide material in 45 open pits.
“We aim to define further Indicated and Inferred resources adding to the existing substantial Marymia resource.
“This campaign is also designed to deliver ‘critical mass’ to increase the mine life of a proposed future mining operation from Marymia’s resource base, specifically targeting an increase in total ounces to ensure that mill capacity of any future mining operation is maximised over the Project’s total mine life.”
Drilling update
The 11 open pits to be targeted in the 2021 drilling campaign are Apollo, Exocet, Ibis, Kookaburra, Parrot, Pigeon, Prickleys, Redfin, Rosella, Skyhawk and Speckled, and they
have been ranked in order of priority, based on historic gold inventory and a review of historic drilling.
Drilling is being undertaken to a target depth of around 160 metres below surface, and has been extended in a number of holes which ended in mineralisation at this target depth.
At the Parrott open pit, all holes were drilled to a depth of more than 190 metres, which included a hole to 217 metres depth – the deepest hole in the program to date.
Drilling is also ongoing at the Redfin open pit, which is adjacent to the large-scale Salmon open pit at Superior Gold Inc’s 5.5-million-ounce gold mine immediately south of Marymia.
Vango plans to release an updated and expanded resource estimate for the Marymia project, including results from the 2020 and 2021 drilling campaigns; assay results from the current drilling campaign are pending and due imminently.
Background
Vango completed an extensive 20,000-metre reverse circulation (RC) and diamond drilling drill campaign in 2020, and all results from this campaign have been released to the market.
The company also completed an extensive geological review and modelling, incorporating results from the 2020 drilling campaign.
Vango plans to release an updated and expanded resource for the Marymia Project, including results from the 2020 and 2021 drilling campaigns, in the second half of 2021.
- Daniel Paproth