Alto Metals Limited (ASX: AME) has encountered a number of shallow oxide gold intersections in its drilling programme at the Vanguard and Maninga Marley Prospects at its 100% owned Sandstone Gold Project in Western Australia.
The company said the shallow oxide gold intersections suggest the potential for free-dig open pit resources.
A step-out RC drilling is now planned for early 2018 to expand the strike extent of known gold mineralised structures at Vanguard, while an aircore programme is also planned for early 2018 to discover overall extent of the Vanguard mineralised system.
Alto’s Managing Director Dermot Ryan said there now appears to be potential for the Vanguard gold system to extend under 2km wide northeast trending alluvial channel immediately south of Vanguard.
“The drilling has confirmed high-grade oxide and primary gold mineralisation in multiple structures over +200m of east-west strike, with isolated gold intersections to the north and south, demonstrating that mineralisation remains open in all directions,” Ryan said.
“We still have 300 x 1m samples awaiting Fire assay and their results will help guide our 2018 drilling programme.”
At Vanguard, 20 RC holes were completed in early November to test for grade, strike extensions and depth continuity of the mineralised system. A second “follow-up” programme of 14 shallower RC holes, totalling 1,474m was completed at Vanguard later in the month.
Mr Ryan said Alto has two main objectives at its 100% owned 800km2 Sandstone Gold Project in Western Australia:
- In the short term, the delineation of relatively shallow gold deposits (new deposits such as Vanguard North, Vanguard and Indomitable and existing deposits such Lord Nelson and Lord Henry) that can be economically mined and trucked to one of several operating or planned gold treatment facilities in the region.
- In the medium to longer term, the discovery of major “West Australian class” (5 million ounce) high-grade oxide and/or primary gold deposits, which could become the basis for major new mining operations with their own processing facility.
