Gold Road crackers for Gruyere
THE CONFERENCE CALLER: Diggers and Dealers kicked off with its customary bang this year with the announcement from Gold Road Resources (ASX: GOR) of the maiden Resource for the company’s 100 per cent-owned Gruyere deposit, located within the Yamarna Gold Belt in Western Australia.
The Resource has been calculated at 96.93 million tonnes at 1.23 grams per tonne gold for a total of 3.84 million ounces of gold.
Adding further gloss to the achievement is the short time frame involved of delivering a maiden Resource within 12 months from the drilling of the first discovery hole at Gruyere.
When combined with Resources at the Central Bore and Attila-Alaric deposits it increases the total endowment within the Yamarna Belt to over five million ounces of gold.
Gold Road managing director Ian Murray isn’t due to deliver the company’s conference presentation until the morning of the final day, but no doubt such information would be difficult to contain for that long.
“Obviously we can’t just sit on the information if it is price sensitive,” Gold Road Resources managing director exclusively told The Resources Roadhouse while on a site visit to the Gruyere deposit.
“Our geological team have worked very hard to get the information ready, so it is everybody’s best interests to get the information out as soon as it is available.”
The company claims the new Resource has confirmed Gruyere to be the first major gold discovery in Western Australia, of over 4 million ounces, in seven years, since the Tropicana discovery of Independence Group (ASX: IGO).
“Obviously we all know how that has grown since then, Murray said.
“These big deposits are becoming rarer and rarer to discover – globally.”
During that seven years there has been many expert industry commentators doubting such a deposit could be found again.
The discovery has the potential to not only produce a lot of gold, but to also to produce a good deal of confidence for an industry which has been feeling the pinch of a depressed market for some time now.
“I think the market will react well,” Murray said.
“But, from a Gold Road perspective – we own 5000 square kilometres of the Yamarna Belt and the Gruyere deposit is only one target within the Belt.
“We believe there are a lot more of these discoveries of this scale to be found within our tenements so we just have to keep doing what we have been doing and find more of them.
“The geological team understand the area much better now, so hopefully our rate of discovery be stay high.”
Gruyere deposit – site of proposed open pit
Trying to claim some ground at the counter of the Gold Road booth within the exhibition area soon became difficult with the attendant staff run off their feet.
“We just have a regular sized booth for the conference, however there will be around seven staff members manning it to provide information to anybody interested in hearing what we have to tell them,” Murray said.
Having raised the curtain on the conference with such a show stopper, will Gold Road have anything special up its sleeve for its presentation for those delegates prepared to put in the hard yards and stay for the last day?
“Obviously the news will be stale by Monday afternoon,” Murray joked.
“So we will try to have something exciting for the presentation on Wednesday to reward al the delegates who have hung in for the long haul.”
Email: perth@goldroad.com.au
Website: www.goldroad.com.au