Mine development is on track at Ramelius Resources’ (ASX:RMS) Penny gold mine within its portfolio of gold assets in Western Australia with the seventh ore drive level well advanced, increasing the number of stope work areas available.
The $1.43 billion market capitalisation company says the CRF plant and associated backfill system has been commissioned. Steeper, higher grade sections of the orebody have been accessed which simplifies stope design and execution.
The new haulage contractor has established full resourcing onsite and is moving ore to Mt Magnet in a timely manner, which Ramelius says matches mine production rates. The 1288RL ore drive is in progress with ‘very high grades’ seen in a number of development faces such as the one shown below:
Updating the market, Managing Director Mark Zeptner says: “It is pleasing to see mining and ore haulage progressing well, but we are also very encouraged to see resource extensions from recent exploration drilling
“Whilst mine design and ore reserve work is currently underway and not due for completion until calendar year end, the potential extension of the Penny mine plan well into FY26 is exciting for the business“
Whilst mine design and ore reserve work is currently underway and not due for completion until calendar year end, the potential extension of the Penny mine plan well into FY26 is exciting for the business.”
Meanwhile, about 15,300m of underground drilling has been conducted from April to August 2023 focusing on Penny North strike extension and Penny West resource definition infill and down-dip extents.
Many of the results have been received which have resulted in a 90-metre increase in strike in the southern area of the resource model for Penny North.
Penny West drill results have resulted in a refinement of the high-grade plunge in the northern portion of the quartz vein and moderate extension to the down-dip and southern portion of the lode.
Ramelius notes exploration continues at Penny targeting strike extents to the north of the current model and west of the known resource area. Proposals to drill additional targets between the offset of the two lodes and deeper exploration holes from a lower drill position to test down-dip gaps in the drilling are also being considered for future work within the current financial year.
The aforementioned deposits have been the focus of exploration and resource definition drilling since April 2023. New drilling comprises of 44 underground diamond holes for approximately 15,300m.
Ramelius says this drilling has been carried out orthogonally to strike direction utilising a diamond drill cuddy that was developed for this purpose. The recent drill results at both deposits and underground development of the lode at Penny North have indicated that the lodes are relatively thinner than the previous interpretations by up to 1m, but also significantly higher grade than previously estimated.
This has resulted in an updated model that has reduced the overall tonnage slightly while significantly increasing the ounces contained within the estimation. Interpretation was carried out incorporating the results of the recent drilling with underground face data to produce an updated mineral resource estimate.
The quartz vein mineralisation was domained as the primary host for mineralisation for both lodes. The hanging wall and footwall of the domains were snapped to the surveyed sample intervals and pickup of the veins within mining developments. Samples were grouped by domain, composited to 1m intervals, and gold was estimated using anisotropic searches and Ordinary Kriging.
A topcut of 120g/t was utilised at just above the 96 percentile after interrogation of assay domain statistics for both lodes. Densities were applied by rock type and weathering. Block size is 5mE x 10mN x 5mRL with minimum sub-blocks of 0.5mE x 1mN x 0.5mRL.
Resource categorisation was applied by using the underground development levels at Penny North to classify the Measured category while envelopes that reflected drill density, thus geological and grade continuity, were used for the indicated and inferred resources. The resource model is reported at a cut-off grade of >2.0g/t and has been depleted as of August 2023.
Write to Adam Orlando at Mining.com.au
Images: Ramelius Resources
