Source : THE AGE NEWS
Horizon Gold has been busy stacking up new ounces at its Gum Creek gold project with a raft of high-grade drilling hits emerging from deposits clustered near its planned processing hub south of Sandstone. The lift could potentially set the stage for a resource boost beyond the base case outlined in its upcoming feasibility study.
The key to the fresh gold lies in where it is surfacing: Eagle, Goldfinch, Shrike South and Swift all cluster around the historic Gidgee mill area and proposed processing hub, building a growing pipeline of future mill feed close to infrastructure.
At Eagle, 1.2km south-east of Gidgee, drilling pushed known mineralisation 300m beyond the existing resource, opening a fresh front for growth. Eagle hosts 83,400 ounces and management expects the latest results to drive a material resource expansion.
Better intersections included 3m grading 6.62 grams per tonne (g/t) gold, 13m grading 1.50g/t gold and 8m grading 2.36g/t gold. Management expects the modelling work now underway to underpin a material expansion to the Eagle resource.
‘Eagle, Shrike South and Goldfinch have all delivered consistent high grades.’
Horizon Gold managing director Scott Williamson
Goldfinch and Shrike South added further fuel to the growth story unfolding around the proposed processing hub. Goldfinch returned hits including 4m grading 6.19g/t gold and 3m grading 5.11g/t gold, while Shrike South produced an 11-metre hit grading 1.18g/t gold including 5m at 2.20g/t gold.
Both prospects are moving into maiden resource estimation territory.
The strongest grades came from Swift, 1.2km east of the Gidgee mill, where drilling outside the existing resource model returned a six-metre hit grading 5.13g/t gold from 95m, including 2m at 14.7g/t gold. Other highlights included 5m grading 4.28g/t gold and 3m grading 6.13g/t gold.
Already hosting 415,600 ounces in its open-pit resource and 68,800 ounces underground, Swift remains one of Gum Creek’s cornerstone deposits. Management says the latest drilling has confirmed a stacked-lode system beyond the current resource envelope, opening the door to further underground growth.
According to management, the shallow, free-milling ounces emerging around Gidgee are tailor-made for conventional open-pit mining and processing, allowing Horizon to grow future mill feed close to its planned infrastructure. At the same time, deeper drilling is starting to expose underground growth potential beneath the existing resource base.
Horizon Gold managing director Scott Williamson said: “These impressive high-grade RC drilling results from Swift, Eagle, Shrike South and Goldfinch continue to unlock our free-milling open pit mining strategy. We’re consistently adding shallow, high-grade resource ounces less than two kilometres from the proposed 2.4Mtpa processing plant while simultaneously drilling deeper to unlock the underground potential throughout the Gum Creek Greenstone Belt.”
The latest drilling is adding to an already substantial resource base at Gum Creek, which hosts 37.97 million tonnes grading 1.89g/t gold for 2.30 million ounces. The project remains Horizon’s flagship asset and the foundation of its plan to build a stand-alone gold operation in WA’s Murchison region.
Spanning much of the Gum Creek Greenstone Belt, the project combines a substantial resource inventory with the advantages of historic mining infrastructure and a proposed processing hub – a rare mix for an undeveloped gold play of its scale.
Commercially, the latest drilling could prove more valuable than the grades alone suggest. Management says much of the emerging inventory sits outside the current mine plan and could enhance project economics. Meanwhile, the growing cluster of deposits could also provide increasing flexibility to optimise mine scheduling, blend ore sources and extend the operation’s production profile.
Elsewhere, resource modelling is underway at Eagle, Goldfinch and Shrike South, while diamond drilling is being prepared at Swift to chase deeper extensions and potential high-grade underground shoots ahead of a resource upgrade later this year. Risk assessments are complete, permitting work is underway and the feasibility study remains on track for release in the coming weeks.
With gold prices continuing to support development economics, the market will likely be watching the upcoming Eagle resource update and maiden estimates at Goldfinch and Shrike South to see how many additional ounces Horizon can add beyond the inventory underpinning the study.
If those deposits continue to grow, Gum Creek may emerge from the study not as a finished development blueprint, but as the launch pad for a much bigger WA gold operation.
With new ounces continuing to gather around the processing hub, Horizon appears to be building a longer growth runway than the study alone might suggest.
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