Black Cat Syndicate (ASX:BC8) is set to begin surface reverse circulation (RC) drilling targeting 3 prospective gold areas within its wholly-owned Paulsens Gold Operation in Western Australia.
The $60.14 million market capitalisation says the exploration work will focus on the Near Mine, Belvedere, and Pantera gold areas and is expected to begin this month.
At Near Mine, drilling will focus on shallow surface extensions to the Apollo lodes to deliver resource growth in the upper mine, as well as near-surface and down-plunge mineralisation in the Eastern Zone.
Surface sampling from quartz veins at this zone has returned results up to 29.7 grams per tonne (g/t) gold.
The company notes that at Belvedere, a 500m strike of the 2.5km-long Belvedere Trend, which is located immediately northeast of the Belvedere resource (30,000oz @ 3.9g/t gold), will be targeted by drilling.
Drilling will also target mineralisation along the fault, which has returned up to 47.3g/t gold from historical sampling, as well as a gold-copper-bearing quartz vein in the footwall of the Belvedere Fault that has returned copper grades of up to 13.57%.
Meanwhile, at Pantera, drilling has been designed to focus on an area where historical rock chip sampling that returned up to 11.9% copper and 22.2g/t gold.
The company also notes drilling will be undertaken in conjunction with detailed mapping and surface sampling, which is currently focused on the Belvedere-Tombstone area.
An updated resource for Paulsens is also expected later this month, which the company hopes will underpin a revised restart study in November.
Addressing the start of exploration, Black Cat Syndicate Managing Director Gareth Solly says the company has its eyes set on increasing the mine life of Paulsens through additional discoveries and expanding mining areas.
“We are excited to commence our regional exploration drilling at Paulsens. This is an area rich in surface anomalism but with very little historic drilling.
Belvedere has already shown to host economic mineralisation and is part of our initial mine plan. There is significant scope to increase mine life with discovery success here and at the undrilled Pantera prospect.
“This is an area rich in surface anomalism but with very little historic drilling”
The recent UG drilling success on the down-plunge extension of Apollo is also an intriguing target that may link the hanging wall of the Main Zone with Apollo. This has the potential to open up additional mining areas in the underground. Surface drilling in these areas will be targeting confirmation of this link to grow resource and mine life.”
Black Cat Syndicate is looking to become a multi-operation gold producer at its 3 wholly-owned operations in Western Australia.
The company’s Paulsens project is located about 180km west of the township of Paraburdoo and consists of an underground mine, a 450,000-tonne-per-annum (tpa) processing facility, a 128-person camp, and numerous open pits and other related infrastructure.
Black Cat Syndicate had $4.656 million cash and cash equivalents at hand as of 30 June 2023, although it raised an additional $8.3 million through a placement in August.
The company has also secured a $60 million funding package from both Fuyang Mingjin New Energy Development and Southeast Mingqing Supply Chain, as reported in September.
Write to Adam Drought at Mining.com.au
Images: Black Cat Syndicate
