Two mining projects in Western Australia (WA) and the Northern Territory are undertaking exploration sampling.
Red Mountain Mining (RMM) has begun its exploration programme at the Kibaye gold project in WA, which consists of 658 planned sampling sites.
The collected soil and rock samples will focus on historical gold results, infill sampling gaps and geophysical targets not previously followed up.
Collected rock samples will be analysed by fire assay and soils will be analysed for gold and base metals at Intertek Genalysis Laboratory Services in Perth. The assay results are expected to be reported by RMM in early October.
The four exploration licences that make up RMM’s project cover the central portion of the Kiabye Greenstone Belt in the Yilgarn‘s Murchison Domain south-east of Mount Magnet.
The four tenements in Kiabye have primarily been explored for base metals with limited gold exploration. Historical exploration focused on two areas, Kiabye Well North and South, where the historical shallow drill site reported 3.45 grams per tonne (g/t) in the last metre of a 14m deep hole.
According to RMM, the target areas in Kibaye are considered to have “high residual potential” as the previous tenement holders covered only 7% of the 23km² strike length.
Bruce gold-copper prospect
MetalsGrove is set to conduct its initial surface mapping and sampling programme over areas prospective for high-grade gold and copper at the Bruce prospect in the Central Desert Region of Australia’s Northern Territory.
The project has a single mineral exploration licence covering an area of approximately 177.22km². In 2022, a mapping programme identified at least three main vein set trends with strike lengths of up to 2.8km.
A total of 91 individual veins have so far been mapped and of the small number of rock chips sampled so far, best assays include gold values of 53g/t, 15g/t and 7.2g/t, and copper values of up to 2.66%.
MetalsGrove said it will focus on the northern portion of the tenement where little previous work has been undertaken. The programme is expected to finish after two weeks.
MetalsGrove CEO and managing director Lijun Yang commented: “With the gold price at or near to its all-time high and with the supply-demand profile for copper looking very encouraging, it seems sensible for us to revisit the Bruce gold-copper prospect.”
The company has also relinquished the Upper Coondina lithium prospect in the East Pilbara district of WA due to “disappointing exploration results and weakness in the lithium market”.
