Kentor Gold announces Inferred Resources estimate at Burnakura
THE BOURSE WHISPERER: Kentor Gold has announced an Inferred Resource estimate for the Burnakura gold project of 10.6 million tonnes at 1.5 grams per tonne for a total of 516,000 ounces at 0.5g/t gold cut-off.
At a 1.5g/t cut-off, the company has estimated the Inferred Resource for Burnakura at 3.2Mt at 2.9g/t for 298,000 ounces of gold.
The estimate comes on the back of Kentor’s recent acquisition of Junka Minerals, which bought with it the assets of the advanced gold and copper projects of Burnakura and Gabanintha located south of Meekatharra in Western Australia, as well as the copper-gold and silver-lead-zinc project at Jervois in the Northern Territory.
“This is an excellent initial result,” Kentor Gold managing director Simon Milroy said in an announcement.
“We now have:
– A substantial near surface Resource pointing to efficient, low cost mining options,
– Mineralisation open at depth offering good prospectivity for more discoveries, and
– An existing processing plant and other infrastructure on site.
“This provides the strong basis for commencing a feasibility study aimed at bringing Burnakura back into production next year.”
The Burnakura project comprises six main deposit areas, all situated within a strike length of approximately 8.5 kilometres.
The deposits are made up of five southern deposits, known as Alliance-New Alliance, Lewis-Randall, Authaal, Federal City and Banderol.
A northern set of deposits are grouped under the banner of NOA (North of Alliance) but are known separately as NOA1 to NOA8.
Mining history of the area includes underground mining of the southern areas during the early part of last century, open pit mining of each deposit area in the 1980s and 1990s.
Underground mining of the NOA2 deposit was carried out from 2005 up to 2009.
Kentor obtained a substantial database of historical drilling that had been carried out both within and adjacent to existing pits, which it was able to use in the estimation of the Resource.
A large majority of this drilling, however, is less than 100m in depth, which restricted the extent to which the resource can currently be modelled.
In the case of the Lewis-Reward, Federal City and Banderol deposits there is no drilling at all below 100m.
Kentor has commenced a feasibility study at Burnakura and a further program of both RC and diamond drilling is planned to commence in September with the aim of increasing confidence in the Resource estimates.