Breaker Resources NL (ASX: BRB) has discovered several new high- grade lodes from deeper drilling below the 1Moz open pit Resource at the Bombora deposit within its Lake Roe Project, east of Kalgoorlie in Western Australia.
Executive Chairman Tom Sanders said significant results received from four reconnaissance diamond drill holes completed below the northern part of Bombora on a 300m spacing have highlighted the strong potential to expand the existing Resource at depth.
The objective of the drilling was to scope out the potential for future underground mining below the open pit Resource ahead of targeted resource definition drilling.
Mr Sanders said All four drill holes encountered significant gold mineralisation with visible gold present in several intersections, including the deepest reported to date at Bombora in two new steep lodes situated approximately 600 metres below surface.
The results have extended the strike length of the high-grade gold lodes below the open pit Resource by 600m to the north. Together with results reported from previous reconnaissance drilling at depth, this increases the overall strike length of known high-grade gold lodes below the open pit Resource to 2km.
Mr Sanders said the outstanding new results demonstrated the sheer scale of the gold system at Bombora and its long-term growth potential.
“The success we have achieved through the recent shallow discovery 3km to the north, and now directly below the northern part of the 1Moz Bombora open pit Resource, shows the multiple options we have to grow the project – something that differentiates it from many of its peers.
“The new drilling has confirmed a 2km strike length of high-grade gold mineralisation situated directly below an extensively de-risked open pit Resource, 80% of which is in the Indicated category.
“The results highlight strong potential for a significant increase in the Resource at grades typically amenable to underground mining.
“It’s also important to note that the high-grade lodes we are seeing at depth at Bombora are similar to the high-grade lodes present in the open pit Resource. In fact, in some cases, they are extensions of the same lodes but without a low-grade halo that is typically applied in an open pit setting.”
Mr Sanders said that by varying the lower cut-off grade it becomes apparent that the mineralisation can be approached with either an open pit or underground mining scenario in mind.
“Another way of saying this is that the Bombora deposit is high-grade by nature and this provides inherent mining flexibility or grade optionality, an aspect that tends to lower mining risk.
“Not all projects are like this, and this has scope to add a lot of value to the project.
“We have done the hard yards on the de-risking front, establishing the continuity in the upper part of the Bombora deposit after extensive drilling and 3D modelling as shown in this report.
“We are now projecting the high-grade lodes over large distances at depth, and we either are hitting them with our reconnaissance drill holes, or discovering new lodes in the process, or both.
Based on the recent drilling, some of the individual flat lode systems are in excess of 1km-long, which matches the dimension of some of the west-dipping lodes in the shallow portions of the deposit. We believe that the continuity we see in the shallow portions of the deposit is likely to translate into a viable future underground mining scenario,” Mr Sanders said.
Breaker has an extensive ongoing drilling campaign underway at Lake Roe with a number of promising prospects to follow-up.
