Horizon Minerals Limited (ASX: HRZ) has commenced an approximately 70,000m drilling programme across a range of targets near Kalgoorlie-Boulder in the world class Goldfields region of Western Australia.
The fully funded, approximately $7 million programme comprises reserve conversion, resource growth and new discovery drilling throughout the 850sq. kmof the company’s 100% owned tenure.
Managing Director Jon Price, said the drilling will be completed systematically with up to three rigs cycling through the program with the results from each round collated, reviewed and informing the next round of drilling.
We are pleased to be commencing the company’s largest ever drilling programme which will feed into our reserve and resource growth plans as part of the Feasibility Study for the larger scale development supporting a proposed stand-alone processing plant at Boorara,” Mr Price said.
“In addition, the company has refined a suite of walk up new discovery targets that will be tested as we continue the search for new large-scale deposits in this prolific gold producing region.
“Horizon is now well funded, producing gold and generating cash, assessing a larger scale production profile and exploring for growth and new discoveries.”
The planned drilling programme comprises infill, geotechnical, metallurgical, environmental and near mine extensional drilling to enable conversion of current Measured and Indicated Resources to Ore Reserves.
Drilling will be completed at the core Boorara, Rose Hill, Brilliant North, Teal and Binduli gold projects to enable assessment of a minimum 4-5 year initial production profile with Boorara providing 70% of the mill feed supported by satellite open cut and underground projects.
At Boorara, 15km east of Kalgoorlie, infill drilling will be completed in a number of areas within the existing block model to increase data density enabling the flat lying cross cutting vein arrays to be incorporated in the updated resource model.
In conjunction with the current trial mining, mine to mill reconciliation data will also be incorporated to improve geological confidence and convert additional material into the Measured and Indicated JORC categories for inclusion in the reserve estimation.
Several holes have also been planned to test key historical high-grade areas below the Crown Jewel deposit.
At the Teal Project area, 12 km northwest of Kalgoorlie, reserve conversion drilling will focus on the oxide and transitional ore (30-70m depth) at Jacques Find and Peyes Farm. Similar ore from Teal was proven to be highly amenable to conventional CIP/CIL treatment in 2017. Horizon also plans to complete additional drilling at Teal South and Teal East.
The Binduli area, 10 km west of Kalgoorlie, contains the Crake deposit which is still open to the north and west, where several, stacked shallow lodes were intersected during drilling in 2018-2019. Some shallow drilling on the eastern edge is also planned along with diamond drilling for further structural and geotechnical information to inform the Feasibility Study.