More High-Grade Gold for Classic Minerals at Forrestania

With the gold price shooting above six-year highs, it’s worth paying some attention to up and coming gold explorers.

Gold is now priced above US$1500/oz and prices are anticipated to rise further as money moves into the ‘safe haven’ of physical gold and speculators jump onboard.

The rising gold price is a nice backdrop for Classic Minerals (ASX:CLZ), an ASX junior that’s forging ahead in advancing drilling at its Forrestania Gold Project in Western Australia’s Forrestania Greenstone Belt.

The Forrestania Project holds 5.36 million tonnes of gold, grading 1.39g/t, for nearly 241,000 ounces — a figure that could soon be significantly expanded given recent drilling results from its 100% owned Kat Gap tenements.

These impressive results come from a series of drilling rounds at Kat Gap, which was acquired back in January and sits just 70 kilometres south of its existing Forrestania Project.

CLZ’s drilling at Kat Gap has focused on the main-granite-greenstone contact, where the company earlier this year revealed high-grade gold intercepts very close to surface, and which holds huge potential for CLZ.

As announced this week, Kat Gap keeps on growing — this time with high-grade gold intercepts found to be extending down dip with increasing width.

This is interesting: the further down that CLZ drill, the wider the gold zones seem to be getting. This is a function of the structural setting — as the contact flattens out, the fault zone opens up wider and the gold lodes thicken accordingly.

Classic’s CEO Dean Goodwin, a geologist with over 30 years’ exploration experience, explained that he has seen this “time and time again in the Goldfields” and sees the project having “potential to grow significantly at depth”.

These deeper gold intersections clearly show that Kat Gap has legs. Furthermore, earlier drilling results, from just over a month ago, doubled the strike length to 400 metres — with significant gold mineralisation intersected extension drill lines.

The system is wide open with no historical RC drilling completed further north along strike. This leaves significant opportunity to uncover extended zones of ore-grade gold intersections along strike to the north, together with the great results that are now starting to be seen down dip at depth.

The next step is to drill deeper holes and follow the system down to get a better idea of size of the prize.

The real takeaway here for CLZ and shareholders is that the high grades and shallow nature of the gold mineralised system on the granite-greenstone contact will enhance the economics of any future open pit mining operation.

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Forrestania Gold Project

In addition to Kat Gap, Classic Minerals’ (ASX:CLZ) Forrestania Gold Project (FGP) also contains the Lady Magdalene, Lady Ada, and Lady Lila gold resources.

CLZ has an 80% interest in the gold rights of the Forrestania Project (excluding Lady Lila and Kat Gap, of which it holds 100%). CLZ also owns a 100% interest in the non-gold rights on the Kat Gap and Lady Lila tenements, including nickel, lithium and other metals.

The FGP contains a Mineral Resource of 5.3 million tonnes at 1.4 g/t for 240,000 ounces of gold, with a Scoping Study indicating both the technical and financial viability of the project.

Drilling at Kat Gap

The Kat Gap Gold Project (exploration licences E74/422 and E74/467) covers 37.5 square kilometres, over a 10 kilometres section of the western granite/greenstone contact at the southern end of the Forrestania Greenstone Belt, and is part of the CLZ’s Forrestania Gold Project (FGP).

Kat Gap is strategically located approximately 70 kilometres south-south east of the Forrestania Gold project which contains the Lady Magdalene and Lady Ada gold resources.

Kat Gap adjoins the Forrestania Nickel Project currently operated by Western Areas (ASX:WSA). Kat Gap and CLZ’s other tenements at FGP — Lady Magdalene, Lady Ada, and Lady Lila — are highlighted in red below:

CLZ added Kat Gap to the Forrestania Project when it purchased 100% of its tenements in January this year from private company Sulphide Resources Pty Ltd. The deal saw CLZ acquire Kat Gap for $250,000, plus a 2% net smelter royalty on production from tenements E74/422 and E74/467.

As reported in our last update on 1 August, Market Moving Gold Assays Just the Start for CLZ, as part of its RC drilling program, CLZ completed a total of 32 holes for 2,040m at Kat Gap in July with the aim of improving/increasing known high-grade gold mineralisation.

The results from that drilling were impressive with significant zones of gold mineralisation found to be located on the granite-greenstone contact. Drilling also showed high-grade gold mineralisation very close to surface and continue down-dip with increasing width.

The main area of drilling was focused primarily on and adjacent to both contacts of a cross-cutting Proterozoic dyke where it intersects the main granite-greenstone contact.

Over five separate drilling campaigns between May 2018 and July 2019, a total of 89 holes for 5,931m were completed all returning significant high-grade gold intercepts. The majority of the drilling is relatively shallow, down to approximately 50m vertical depth below surface and covered a strike length of the granite-greenstone contact of approximately 400m.

Drilling continues

Following the above results, on 14 August, CLZ recommenced its aggressive RC drilling program at Kat Gap to extend the known mineralised zone further north and south.

The company completed a further 17 holes for 1,880m at Kat Gap with the aim of improving/increasing known high-grade gold mineralisation.

This round of RC drilling at Kat Gap focused primarily on testing the down dip extent of previous high-grade intercepts on the main granite-greenstone contact adjacent to the crosscutting Proterozoic dyke.

Drilling also focused on testing down-dip projections of recent high-grade intercepts in the newly extended northern zone.

Results arrived this week and continued to impress with significant zones of gold mineralisation located on the granite-greenstone contact.

The West Australian reported on the announcement:

And here’s a summary of the results from Finfeed:

The results demonstrate that Kat Gap keeps on growing. The main granite-greenstone contact gold lode was shown to extend down dip, a further 50m vertical below surface with significant gold mineralisation intersected adjacent to the cross-cutting Proterozoic dyke.

This drilling, along the granite-greenstone contact, has now extended the down-dip projection adjacent to the Proterozoic dyke. The average depth of gold mineralisation in this area adjacent to the dyke has been extended from 50-60m below surface down to 90-110m vertical below surface with mineralisation open in all directions.

Plus, the further down that CLZ drill, the wider the gold zones seem to be getting — clearly showing the potential to grow significantly at depth, which CLZ intend to explore by drilling deeper holes to follow the system down.

Goodwin said, “We also ventured out into the granite to drill for the first time 400m west of the main granite-greenstone contact. Here we tested a very small section of the 4.4km long auger soil anomaly looking for primary gold within the granite. Results were very encouraging with plenty of anomalous gold below the oxide profile.

“I like to call this smoke and there’s plenty of smoke out in the granite. Where there’s smoke there’s generally a decent fire nearby”.

Here’s a Kat Gap plan view showing recent and previous CLZ RC drilling plus significant gold intersections:

Of the 17 holes for 1,880m drilled at Kat Gap in this most recent round, 12 holes were drilled along the granite-greenstone contact and 5 holes drilled out into the granite 300-400m west of our current drilling area.

Twelve RC holes (FKGRC090 to FKGRC098 and FKGRC104 to FKGRC106) for a total of 1,360m were drilled testing the up-dip and down-dip projections of the main granite-greenstone contact lode in the vicinity of the cross-cutting Proterozoic dyke and the down-dip extent of the northern extension zone.

This drilling was designed primarily to test the down-dip extent of previous high-grade intercepts where the contact flattened. It was also conducted to provide enhanced detail around gold lode structural orientation including potential plunge direction.

The deeper drilling has shown the main granite-greenstone contact continues to roll or flatten out in the down dip projection. Where the contact is steep the gold lode tends to narrow and weaken in grade. As the contact rolls to a flatter angle both the width and grade of the gold lode tends to increase, as seen in cross of section 92710N below:

What’s next for Classic?

CLZ’s future drilling programs at Kat Gap will focus on testing the main granite-greenstone contact that is further north and south along strike from the current drilling area.

The next few RC drilling programs will test the northerly and southerly extensions for another 200-300m along strike.

RC Drilling will also probe at depth below the current shallow holes along the entire 400m of strike that has been delineated by CLZ to date. The plan is for several deep orientated diamond holes, designed to collect valuable structural data, to probe the system to 300m vertical below surface.

Aircore and RC drilling programs will also be conducted out into the granite to test the large 4.4 kilometre long geochemical anomaly identified in historical auger soil sampling.

The initial program will focus around the cross-cutting Proterozoic dyke where high auger values were returned along with a dilational site located in the north-eastern most area of the geochemical anomaly.

The company also see strong potential for additional mineralisation to be identified up-dip, down-dip and along strike, both outside of and within the existing RC drill coverage. It has plans follow up RC and diamond holes with drilling scheduled for mid-October.

Goodwin explained, “The next stages for Kat Gap will be to extend the known gold mineralised zone further north and south from our current drilling area. This would entail testing the northerly extensions for another 300m and the southerly extensions for 300m.

“If successful that would give us a combined strike length of 1,000m. We would also probe at depth down dip along the entire 400m of gold mineralised granite-greenstone contact we have delineated to date. A few deep diamond holes to collect valuable structural data will also be incorporated into the program to probe at depth 200-300m below existing drill coverage.”

Here’s a look at the plan view showing strike length to be tested in follow up drilling:

The impressive drill results reported by CLZ at Kat Gap so far, combined with the company’s ongoing aggressive exploration program at the project, suggests further positive newsflow is likely to continue rolling in as the exploration program proceeds.