Proactiveinvestors Australia

Blackham Resources www.blackhamresources.com.au/
Full Blackham Resources profile here

Blackham Resources (ASX: BLK) is a Western Australian based company focused on exploration at the Matilda and Williamson Gold Mines. The company is also evaluating the development of the Scaddan and Zanthus Energy Projects for the export of coal and building of a coal to liquids (CTL) facility.

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Blackham Resources unearths high grade, near surface gold extensions at Matilda

Blackham has confirmed the potential for high grade gold at surface at its Matilda Project, with recent drill assays delivering 3 metres at 11.4g/t gold from 73 metres, which bodes well for the economics of the project and an extension to the existing Resource.

Blackham Resources’ (ASX: BLK) has uncovered high grade, near surface gold from the first holes drilled in the current exploration program at the M10 Prospect, part of its Matilda Gold Project.

The over 600 square kilometre project surrounds Apex Minerals’ (ASX: AXM) operating 12.7 million tonnes at 5.4 grams per tonne (g/t) Wiluna Gold Mine, in a region that has produced more than 4 million ounces of gold.   

Drilling around the periphery of the M10 Prospect has returned high grade intercepts of:

- 3 metres at 11.4g/t gold from 73 metres, including 1 metre at 29.5g/t; and
- 3 metres at 8.44g/t gold from 86 metres, including 1 metre at 20.4g/t.

These build on the previously reported high grade intercepts at the M10 Prospect of 8 metres at 9.98g/t gold from 107 metres, 4 metres at 15g/t gold from 58 metres and 6 metres at 5.11g/t gold from 41 metres.

The potential for further discoveries is enhanced by the fact that the mineralisation remains open to both the north and south, with the two recent holes on the limit of drilling.

Importantly, mineralisation has been intersected in new stratigraphic positions and may represent new ore shoots that will build on the existing resources at M10.

The significance of these discoveries is the confirmation of the potential for ore at shallow depths along trend from the know deposits at Matilda.

Bryan Dixon, Blackham Resources managing director, told Proactive Investors today Blackham keeps extending the gold mineralisation along strike and down plunge which is encouraging.

“It just appears we’re going to have more tonnes and probably a higher grade than initially thought.”

These results are from the first nine holes of a 17-hole reverse circulation drill program covering 1,916 metres completed this month.

The program tested extensions of mineralisation both up and down plunge at the M10, M6 and M3 deposits at Matilda.

Forward plan

While Blackham is focusing on testing the extensions at the M10 Prospect, the company is also concurrently conducting a validation exercise on historical drill data.

“We’re actually going through and doing a validation exercise on that historical data, taking it back to source documents to confirm validity and then we’re expecting, hopefully, the last lot of drilling results on the M10 in the next two weeks,” Dixon said.

Blackham then plans to begin resource modelling after that, with a resource for the M10 and other prospects anticipated in around two months.

“In effect right now we’ve only got a small resource for the Matilda mine, and within two months we’re hoping we’ll enclose a lot more of the mineralisation into that resource,” Dixon said.


Positive economics

Dixon told Proactive Investors Blackham is confident the M10 prospect will be an open pit operation.

Importantly, this improves the economics of the project.

“We’re pretty confident those economics will stack up because it is such a nice grade and so shallow, and the orebody pretty much starts from surface,” Dixon said.


Matilda

The Matilda project is located about 19 kilometres south of the township of Wiluna.

Matilda produced 168,000 ounces from seven shallow pits prior to its sudden closure in 1992.

Most of these pits were mined to less than 50 metres and have extensive shallow mineralisation outside the pit limits.

Matilda is a large mineralised system with gold hosted in saddle reef and shear structures.

Last week Blackham applied for mining lease over its recently upgraded Regent Deposit, which now hosts 237,000 ounces of gold.

Regent has an updated Resource of 3.5 million tonnes at 2.1g/t gold following a recent review by independent geological consultants Runge.

The total Matilda Resource has since grown to 12.4 million tonnes at 1.9g/t for 757,000 ounces of contained gold following the 193% increase in the Resource at the Regent deposit.

Since February, Blackham has completed 4,000 metres of drilling at Matilda.

Another upside to the project is the potential for early cash flow from a toll treating agreement.

Blackham and Apex previously initiated discussions with regard to the possibility of processing ore through Apex’s Wiluna gold plant, just 9 kilometres away from the Regent deposit, which could provide additional funding for Blackham to explore the area.

Blackham has one of the largest landholdings in the mining centre and one of Western Australia’s major Archean greenstone belts.

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