Gold producer Focus Minerals (ASX: FML) is pleased to advise that drilling to establish a sustainable production base for upcoming open pit mining at its Coolgardie Gold Operations in Western Australia has delivered a series of outstanding high-grade gold intersections from the Happy Jack deposit, adjacent to its flagship Tindals Mining Centre.
The ongoing 20-hole surface drilling program at Happy Jack, which is intended to validate historical drilling and test for high-grade ore potential, has delivered excellent intersections from the first 12 holes (refer Table 1), including :
o 8m @ 55.6g/t Au from 114m (with visible Au)
o 2m @ 20.7g/t Au from 29 metres
o 4m @ 7.0g/t Au from 75 metres, and
o 2m @ 5.3g/t Au from 88 metres.
Happy Jack is one of several potential open pit projects located near the Tindals Mining Centre, from where the bulk of ore is presently sourced from underground for Focus’ Coolgardie Gold Operations.
The Company plans to commence open pit production in early 2011, supplementing underground ore sourced from Tindals and the new mining centre at The Mount, located to the south-east of the Three Mile Hill treatment facility.
As part of this process, a targeted RC drilling program has been underway testing along the recently defined Happy Jack deposit trend.
Recent exploration drilling at the Big Blow project, located immediately west of Happy Jack, in conjunction with recent QA-QC work, has identified not just the larger-than-expected extent of the Happy Jack trend (+600 metres) but also historical high-grade drilling intercepts that provide indications of high-grade trends (see Figure 1).
Historical intercepts from 1994 drilling include 2m @ 22.6g/t from 51m and 3m @ 31.1g/t from 53m.
The identification of these higher grade trends assisted with the targeting of holes such as TNDC0316 down-plunge to test the extent of the high-grade zone and the resulting intersection of 8m @ 55.6g/t from 114m is a very pleasing outcome.
www.focusminerals.com.au/...R4_T8%3d&tabid=314&mid=879