Strong results have come in from the recent aircore drilling campaign of Riversgold Ltd (ASX:RGL) at the Northern Zone Intrusive Hosted Gold Project, 25 kilometres east-south-east of the Kalgoorlie Super Pit in Western Australia.
The July 2024 drilling program, conducted by Australian Aircore Drilling, consisted of 26 holes across 1,903 metres, with cuttings logged by Riversgold geologists.
Significant mineralisation event
Results indicate a significant gold mineralisation event, with drilling targeting the shallower, up-dip portion of the mineralised system.
The program yielded impressive results, including a significant composite intercept of 18 metres at 4.14 g/t gold from 36 metres in NZRC001.
Subsequent single-metre assays of NZRC001 revealed a higher-grade core, with intervals including 10 metres at 4.94 g/t from 39 metres, 14 metres at 3.6 g/t from 39 metres and 18 metres at 2.8 g/t from 36 metres.
Additional drilling results in other holes have replicated zones of gold mineralisation, with key intersections including 16 metres at 4.69 g/t from 30 metres, 4 metres at 6.9 g/t from 39 metres and 9 metres at 1.2 g/t from 31 metres.
Riversgold has drawn comparisons between the Northern Zone Project and Saturn Metals' Apollo Hill Gold Project, which has a resource estimate of 105 million tonnes at 0.54 g/t gold, amounting to 1.839 million ounces of gold.
The company believes the Northern Zone has the potential to develop into an even larger project, with a conceptual exploration target of 200 to 250 million tonnes at 0.4 to 0.6 g/t gold, which translates to 2.5 to 4.8 million ounces of gold.
Plans to expand footprint
Further infill and step-out drilling is planned to expand the footprint of the mineralised porphyry, with Riversgold well-funded to continue its exploration efforts.
The project is readily accessible via the Bulong road, which is paved up to 9 kilometres from the prospect site.
RGL chair David Lenigas said: “These latest gold results are very exciting for this project and it is great to be able to back up our initial results at Northern Zone with this latest run of assays so quickly after the recent success of our latest RC and aircore campaigns that we reported on in July.
“These results have exceeded our initial expectations and indicate that we have very significant shallow supergene and oxide gold mineralisation that overlays our main hard-rock porphyry target area.
“The fact that this gold project is so close to Kalgoorlie, with all of its associated infrastructure and third-party processing plants, makes it very attractive for us, especially with the AUD$ gold price increase.
“The next drilling program will focus on heading to the northeast, northwest and southeast, where the maiden diamond drilling traverse intersected mineralisation down to 450 metres and in excess of 150 metres thick in the unweathered underlying porphyry.
“The identification of a fault, believed to be a controlling feature of mineralisation in the area, will also be targeted in a follow-up drill program that will be finalised shortly.
“We look forward to the results from the next round of drilling which we are hopeful of starting within weeks.”
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