Great Boulder Resources (ASX:GBR) has laid out its 2024 plans for fresh drilling work across its Side Well project in Western Australia, with necessary funding and approvals in place.
The gold and base metals explorer reports that it has mapped out a ‘measured approach’ to exploration at Side Well for the first 6 months of 2024, starting with low-cost aircore drilling to test new targets along the Ironbark corridor.
Great Boulder is also planning aircore drilling within the 700m-long Mulga Bill North prospect to test the continuity of previously-identified mineralisation in the area.
Once all aircore assays have been received, Great Boulder plans to then kick off reverse circulation (RC) drilling at Mulga Bill North, before closing out the first half of 2024 with a third aircore campaign. As part of this third campaign, Great Boulder has budgeted for around 10,000m of infill drilling along the Ironbark corridor.
While subject to change depending on assay results, Great Boulder predicts that following the several bouts of aircore work, the second half of 2024 will likely consist mostly of RC drilling, though further aircore holes are still planned for the Gnaweeda and Polelle projects.
Great Boulder had just shy of $5 million worth of cash in the bank at the end of December 2023 to take on these exploration objectives, according to its latest quarterly report, released today (31 January 2024).
Over the December quarter, Great Boulder handed over an updated drilling result dataset to an independent consultant for a Side Well mineral resource estimation, which was announced on 16 November.
The resource update highlighted a 29% increase in contained gold to 668,000 ounces of gold and an increase in average grade from 2.6 grams per tonne (g/t) Au to 2.8g/t Au. Moreover, 51% of the ounces lie in the higher-confidence ‘indicated’ category following the MRE update.
However, the Mulga Bill North prospect was not included in this resource update, as Great Boulder says it still requires additional drilling to allow for geological modelling with ‘sufficient confidence’ for resource estimation.
As such, will all the planned drilling for the area over the coming months, Great Boulder says it expects this prospect to contribute additional resources to Side Well during 2024.
Taking a look at the other projects in Great Boulder’s portfolio, the company is gearing up for auger sampling, aircore drilling and further heritage survey work at the Polelle project — over which Great Boulder has an option to acquire a 75% interest — during 2024.
Meanwhile, the company is awaiting samples from an initial soil sampling program completed in the final quarter of 2023 at the Wellington Base Metals Project.
And at Gnaweeda, which lies just 10km from Side Well, Great Boulder is planning to complete initial heritage surveys by mid-2024, to be followed by aircore drill testing.
Write to Joshua Smith at Mining.com.au
Images: Great Boulder Resources
