Ora Banda Mining Ltd (ASX:OBM) has delivered strong operational and drilling progress, including first pass regional aircore (AC) and reverse circulation (RC) drilling, across its portfolio of gold assets in Western Australia
The company produced 5,185 ounces of gold in January, after milling more than 90,000 tonnes of ore – progressing towards a nameplate capacity of 100,000 tonnes per month.
On the mining front, open pit mining at Missouri and Riverina continues, with initial pre-stripping works commencing in January at the Sand King mine.
Encouragingly, grassroots exploration programs continue to deliver positive results with significant highlights from first-pass aircore drilling including:
- 4 metres at 2.64 g/t gold from surface (Greater Pacific);
- 4 metres at 3.80 g/t from 56 metres (Sunraysia North); and
- 12 metres at 0.60 g/t from 36 metres (Kangaroo).
Looking ahead, Ora Banda has further assays pending and follow up drilling planned across its projects
“Improvement plans underway”
Ora Banda managing director Peter Nicholson said: “Ora Banda has made significant process with our operations over the past year.
“The production throughput issues we are experiencing continue to diminish in severity as the improvement plans underway continue to be executed.
“It is always exciting to see highly significant assay results from first pass wide spaced aircore drilling.
“Identifying gold anomalism in holes 80 metres apart means that there is plenty of follow up work to be done on these prospects
“We look forward to receiving the outstanding assay results at Sunraysia North and the Greater Pacific prospect and getting the drill rigs back out there to secure a long-term future for the company.”
Operations update
Ora Banda has updated its guidance range for 2022 gold production from the low end of the prior guidance range (70,000-75,000 ounces) to 62,000-68,000 ounces.
The production downgrade has been largely due to production shortfalls at both Riverina and Missouri combined with a lower-than-expected recovered grade at Missouri.
At Missouri, the company is focused on productivity enhancements combined with implementing improvements to drill and blast practices following independent expert review.
Ora Banda has also changed out the drill and blast contractors during January, with the new contractor finalising mobilisation of their drilling fleet in early February.
Furthermore, the company’s technical team remains focused on improving the grade performance at Missouri.
Lithium exploration update
There has been no previous recorded lithium focused exploration within Ora Banda’s tenements, but numerous pegmatite-hosted lithium occurrences were discovered as a consequence of gold exploration.
Abundant unclassified pegmatite occurrences are observed over extensive areas in outcrop and drilling, where about 1,130 pegmatite occurrences appear in Ora Banda’s database.
Preliminary lithium exploration work commenced with a total of 35 samples collected across Ora Banda’s tenure from known pegmatite outcrops and drill intersections (core and chips).
These samples were selected based on availability across numerous locations to obtain a range of data across Ora Banda’s tenure and are not as part of a dedicated lithium exploration program.
Ora Banda will continue to evaluate the lithium potential over time as part of a broader exploration strategy for the highly prospective Davyhurst tenements.
Plan showing the location of lithium bearing pegmatites within OBM tenements
Regional exploration update
Final assay results have now been received for aircore drilling conducted in September and October 2021 targeting Kangaroo, Nyborgs, Turkey Flat, Wuruk, Ember and Komodo Prospects in the Lady Ida Project.
Whilst drilling was completed in the second half of 2021, assay results have been held up due to excessive turnaround times at the laboratory.
Limited drill results received to date at the Riverina Project have extended mineralisation at the Sunraysia North prospect a further 400 metres south and returned significant intersections of 4 metres at 2.64 g/t gold from surface and 8 metres at 0.87 g/t from 32 metres undercover at the previously untested area of Greater Pacific.
Regional location map.