Final assay results reveal fresh Plateau gold hits for Rockfire Resources (ROCK)

Wednesday saw Rockfire Resources (LSE:ROCK) reveal assay results for the last two drill holes at its increasingly prospective Plateau gold deposits in Queensland, Australia.

The business revealed that hole BPL012 intersected 1m at 18.4g/t gold – the second-highest gold grade encountered during drilling at Plateau to date – while also hitting 12m at 2.5g/t gold. Meanwhile, hole BPL019 intersected 10m at 2g/t gold including 4m at 4.2g/t gold.

The figures are the last ones to be received from Rockfire’s highly-encouraging October 2019 drilling programme at Plateau, which is based around 50km southeast of the Australian gold mining centre of Charters Towers.  It is also 17km east of the 3-million-ounce, operating Pajungo gold mine, and 47 southwest of the 10-million-ounce gold Ravenswood gold mining operations.

Last month saw Rockfire soar on the news that it had potentially discovered a ‘large-scale gold deposit’ at the project. It revealed that initial drilling results from its programme had returned broad, consistent gold assays with mineralisation occurring almost continuously throughout a 215m deep drill hole.   In particular, the firm believes that hole BPL025 – which intersected 177 at 0.5g/t gold – had intersected the upper levels of an extensive mineralised system.

Gold grades are now expected to increase continually alongside depth, as they do at a comparable 10-million-ounce gold project owned by Resolute Mining called Mt Wright. Following this, earlier in December, the business said further assay results from its recent drilling campaign on the project had extended the discovery’s confirmed length of mineralisation to more than 150m.

In Wednesday’s update, Rockfire said that it is now planning further geophysics at Plateau and will update its modelling of mineralisation for the project to include all of its recent drilling results. Furthermore, additional reverse circulation drilling is planned to extend gold mineralisation along strike and at depth.

Chief executive David Price added: ‘We’re delighted that drilling beneath the Plateau resource has hit such excellent grades and widths. These results demonstrate that gold mineralisation extends deeper and provides strong growth potential for the resource.

‘These deeper intersections are only 65m from surface and are still well within depths possible for open pit mining. There are operating gold processing plants nearby, so should any future toll treatment possibility eventuate, the costs of processing may materially reduce. I should clarify that no discussions have been instigated with the owners of these facilities at this point in time.

‘With all holes in this drilling campaign intersecting outstanding gold grades and widths, we are confident that our understanding of the geology and mineralisation is improving with each hole drilled. Additional geophysics will be undertaken to expand our interpretation at depth.

‘Targets for growth of the gold resource have been clearly identified and Rockfire plans to recommence drilling as soon as possible. The recent exercise of warrants has provided additional drilling capital and our technical team has already started planning for the next phase of drilling.’

Author: Daniel Flynn

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