Lunnon Metals (ASX: LM8) has elected to expand the gold exploration programme in the Foster area, located at its Kambalda Gold & Nickel Project (KGNP) in WA.
The Lady Herial prospect has delivered significant, near surface, high-grade drill results from the current programme.
In parallel the company has recognised that there are multiple other gold prospects likely projecting into, or being proximate to, the same favourable zones of the Defiance Dolerite.
This realisation has significantly increased their prospectivity. Based on this interpretation, the company will expand its discovery programme to test a suite of high-ranking prospects in parallel to advancing Lady Herial.
This program,e is intended to firm up the pipeline of gold opportunities at various stages of maturity ranging from early stage testing through Mineral Resource estimation and definition, to open pit design and permitting.
The current two, thick, parallel mineralised structures that make up Lady Herial, appear to be part of a suite of parallel stacked structures akin to the Defiance lodes at the nearby Victory Underground mine on Gold Fields’ side of the project boundary.
With this potential in mind, surface mapping in the immediate area of Lady Herial has defined a line of shallow prospecting ‘pits’ that strike in the same orientation and over the same distance (50m-60m) as the Upper and Lower Structures already identified to date.
Past rock chip and grab sampling indicates gold mineralisation is present in these ‘pits’, recording 2.57g/t Au and 3.61g/t Au from samples taken in 2016. Given the success and rapid progress at Lady Herial, more detailed follow up rock chip and grab sampling of these ‘pits’ has been conducted.
Preliminary cross-sectional interpretation suggests there is potential for these ‘pits’ to be the surface expression of another stacked structure in the footwall of the Lady Herial system. Likewise, the exciting high-grade intervals at the end of recent hole FOS24RC_056, recording1 6m @ 62.47g/t Au from 17m could also be a parallel footwall structure. Confirmatory panning of drill spoils from the 1m @ 350g/t Au in that same hole, recorded the presence of coarse visible gold, providing strong confidence in the prior reported assay result.
"Again, more opportunities keep revealing themselves at Lady Herial,” Managing Director, Edmund Ainscough, said.
“We are diligently going about collecting as much new data as possible and confirming the information we’ve already recorded. In particular, it was important to confirm the exceptional grades received from drilling as this will give us great confidence as we progress the deposit through the definition and evaluation stages.
“Recognising the strong host rock control on the better thicknesses and grade of the gold mineralisation at Lady Herial has also encouraged us to revisit mapping of the immediate surrounds as well as further afield.
“This has highlighted that not only is Lady Herial open, but it may also be part of a family of stacked structures and at the larger belt scale that there are multiple other gold prospects with the right characteristics and potential to replicate the success enjoyed to date. Approving an expanded drill program was the logical next step and this redoubled effort will look to quickly assess and define all these opportunities to firm up a portfolio of robust gold prospects capable of exploitation.”
