Panoramic broadens Gidgee outlook

OUT AND ABOUT: Not all the news at Diggers & Dealers comes from the companies presenting their power points in the main auditorium.

Gold aspirant Panoramic Resources is telling everybody it bumps into at the conference that it plans to bring its recently-acquired Gidgee gold project back into production within three years with a forecasted production rate of 100,000 ounces per year.

The company is also eager to boost the current resource at the project from 310,000 ounces at 5.2 grams per tonne gold to around 500,000 ounces within two years.

Panoramic acquired the 1,200 square kilometres project, located 130km west of Wiluna in Western Australia, from Apex Resources in February this year for $15.5 million.

Since then an ongoing review of the asset has identified over 200 prospective drill targets.

The company has commenced an aggressive exploration program including a 20,000 metre air core drill program ahead of an initial 15,000m RC and diamond drilling program scheduled for the last quarter of the year.

Panoramic has over $100 million in the bank is expects to spend around $20 million of this to refurbish the in-situ 600,000 tonnes per year carbon-in-pulp mill as well as upgrading the mining camp and other infrastructure.

Like any self-respecting managing director should, Peter Harold believes his company’s project to be “significantly undervalued”.

He justified his claims by identifying the project’s attributes, namely its existing shallow high-grade resources, exploration potential and low capital cost to fast track production.

“With Gidgee we have acquired a large tenement holding, with over 20 existing open pits and two underground mines, and we have already identified 210 high-grade drill targets,” Harold said.

“The project is located in a greenstone belt area on tenements that have produced over one million ounces of gold, where less than three per cent of all drilling is more than 150 metres deep, which is why we consider the exploration upside to be substantial.

“There is good infrastructure in place and we have the financial resources to bring Gidgee back into production in a very short time.

“Our production target of 100,000 ounces a year is perfectly realistic, and we would place Gidgee among, or very close to, the top twenty gold operations in Australia.”