Catalpa scores encouraging drill hits

THE DRILL SERGEANT: Rising mid-tier Australian gold producer Catalpa Resources has received some encouraging results from three drill holes carried out during its on-going diamond drilling program.

The current “Deeps” program is testing the potential of the company’s multi-million ounce Edna May gold system at Westonia in Western Australia.

The ‘Deeps’ drilling program has been designed by Catalpa to test for depth extensions to mineralisation located beneath the newly released Underground Mineral Resource upgrade.

The company has identified high grade reef mineralisation approximately 100 metres down dip from the base of the Resource, at 550m depth, with one hole intersecting the Edna May Reef and Western Reef as predicted based on structural interpretations.

This hole returned a best intersection of 6.15m at 8.5 grams per tonne gold from 677.4m.

The hole also intersected extensions to two high grade gold reefs returning 1.10m at 78.8g/t gold from 664.1m and 1.20m at 22.2g/t gold from 641.4m.

Two other holes, carried out as part of Stage 3 drilling, which has been designed to test for both depth and lateral extensions to mineralisation, were also successful in intersecting anticipated reef structures.

These returned best intersections 1.20m at 20.8g/t gold from 487.5m and 1.15m at 10. 3g/t gold from 493.8m.

“The strength of these Resource expansion drill results continues to support the potential for a concurrent underground operation at Edna May,” Catalpa Resources managing director and CEO Bruce McFadzean said in an announcement.

“These results extend the Edna May Reef and Western Reef mineralisation a further 100 metres beyond the current Resource.

“We will immediately refine our drilling program to enable the estimation of an Inferred Resource in this area.”

Catalpa said these latest drilling results combined with previous high grade drill results to demonstrate the significant potential for further Resource growth within the multi-million ounce Edna May gold system at depth and along strike.

The results support the company’s objective of developing a high grade underground operation concurrent with existing operations to provide high grade feed to the Edna May plant in 2012.