Spartan Resources was feeling the love at the RIU Explorers Conference after announcing visible gold in its deepest hole to date at the Never Never gold deposit in Western Australia.
On a down-day for ASX gold stocks, Spartan shares jumped 9%.
Drilling hit 20.5m of “typical” Never Never-style mineralisation, with indicative heavy silicification and biotite-chlorite alteration from 871.5m down-hole.
The core included small specs of visible gold at 878.7m down-hole.
The intercept is located down-plunge and more than 170m below the current Never Never resource of 952,000 ounces at grading 5.74 grams per tonne gold.
Spartan managing director Simon Lawson told RIU delegates the deposit was now the height of the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.
“We’re pretty confident it keeps going,” he said.
“The consistency of this deposit is unlike anything I’ve ever seen in my 20 years of experience.”
Spartan has five drill rigs on site at Never Never ahead of a resource update due mid-year.
Lawson said the company’s focus for 2024 was drilling to de-risk the project.
“I’m not going to apologise for that,” he said.
“We will continue to de-risk the project.”
Spartan is no stranger to risk after having to suspend the Dalgaranga gold plant in 2022, which was processing circa 1 gram per tonne dirt.
What followed was a difficult recapitalisation in early 2023.
“We didn’t have a lot of friends back then,” Lawson said.
But the struggling company drilled just 600m from the plant and discovered Never Never, which proved to be a game-changer.
“It’s substantial vindication for why we made those tough calls,” Lawson said.
Other new high-grade results reported today included 15m at 6.06g/t gold from 358m, including 3m at 23.65g/t outside the resource at Four Pillars, and 23.8m at 2.44g/t gold from 379m, including 5m at 5.23g/t at Sly Fox.
A new exploration target for the project is due by the end of the month.
Spartan is targeting a reserve estimate of at least 300,000oz at more than 4g/t gold, which will put it on the path to achieve its goal of a minimum five-year high-grade mine plan.
