Sunshine Metals (ASX:SHN) has upgraded the resource at its Ravenswood Consolidated Project in Queensland, including a 28% increase in total tonnage since February and a 57% increase in contained gold.
The project, which is located near Charters Towers, hosts a “high-grade” and shallow resource of 904,000 ounces gold equivalent recoverable after significantly upgrading the Liontown resource.
The increased resource is mainly attributable to Liontown where the independent resource increased 53% to 4.5 million tonnes at 3.6 grams per tonne gold equivalent.
Gold now accounts for 36% of the contained metal value at Liontown, surpassing contained zinc at 28% resulting in the Resource being stated in recoverable gold equivalent.
Since acquiring Ravenswood in September 2023, Sunshine Metals has increased the total resource by 42%.
The Ravenswood Consolidated Project’s MRE now totals 6.99 million tonnes at 4g/t with 42% of the resource in the indicated category.
In February 2024, Liontown’s MRE totalled 2.94 million tonnes at 10.6% zinc-equivalent, while Ravenswood’s totalled 5.95 million tonnes at 12% zinc-equivalent.
Between February and March 2025, the company intends to resume drilling at the Liontown deposit.
Managing Director Damien Keys says the Liontown resource is “large, shallow, and high-grade” and has driven this resource upgrade.
“We have focussed our drilling on Liontown’s copper and gold-rich footwall across 2023 and 2024,” Keys says.
“Similarly, metallurgical recoveries have been optimised on gold-copper. Accordingly, gold now surpasses zinc as the dominant metal in the system and the Liontown resource is now reported in recoverable gold-equivalent terms.
“Sunshine will focus on western extensions to the Liontown mineralisation when drilling returns in 2025. The system is practically unexplored to Cougartown and Tigertown where historic drilling has returned 17m @ 3.1g/t gold from 22m.”
The Ravenswood Project is located in the Charters Towers-Ravenswood district which has produced over 20 million ounces of gold and 14 million tonnes of volcanic-massive sulphide zinc-copper-lead-gold ore.
Sunshine Metals is focused on discovering and developing its portfolio of projects in Queensland.
Write to Aaliyah Rogan at Mining.com.au
Images: Sunshine Metals
