Further assays from drilling at the Dulcie Laterite Pit target within the Split Rocks gold project in Western Australia’s Forrestania greenstone belt have validated the concept of a broad-scale mineralised shear zone target for owner Zenith Minerals (ASX: ZNC).
The results cover the remaining nine holes of a reverse circulation campaign at Dulcie Laterite Pit, which is one of three high-priority targets currently being evaluated within the project area.
The gold-bearing bedrock shear zone is believed to extend over 2km of strike and remains open down dip with a thickness ranging from 4m to 40m, with depth extent yet to be fully defined.
Zenith said gold zones appear to be locally stacked and open to the east, as well as down-dip to the west.
Follow-up drilling will be carried out at the zones over the coming weeks.
Drilling at Dulcie Laterite Pit was approved by Zenith’s board in October with the aim of moving the company to a more advanced stage of exploration and affirming its position in the precious and base metals space.
Composite results
Last month, Zenith reported a series of 4m composite assay results for the first 18 drill holes at Dulcie Laterite Pit, from a total of 27 holes completed on 120m-spaced sections.
Assays returned gold mineralisation in every hole except one, with best results of 8m at 7.4 grams per tonne gold, including 4m at 14.4g/t; 12m at 3.1g/t, including 8m at 4.4g/t; 8m at 1.1g/t; 4m at 1.8g/t and 8m at 0.6g/t gold within 20m at 0.4g/t.
These results have been affirmed by the new composite assays which include 1m resamples from the first 18 holes.
Best reported results were 9m at 3.9g/t, including 3m at 9.1g/t; 8m at 2.7g/t, including 2m at 9.2g/t and 12m at 0.5g/t; 13m at 0.7g/t; and 17m at 0.5g/t.
The new 4m composites include grades of 3.3g/t, 1.1g/t, 1.7g/t, 0.4g/t and 0.8g/t gold.
Further exploration work
Zenith chairman Peter Bird said the new results will underpin further exploration work planned at Dulcie Laterite Pit.
“The Dulcie area is [our] current focus and another eight targets are sited within 18km of prospective strike,” he said.
“Once we have completed a refined interpretation of the current dataset, we will advance to the next stage [to] try and identify some higher-grade zones and consider some great depth extensions to define a broad-scale, open pit-type resource.”
Prolific location
Zenith’s wholly-owned Split Rocks project is located within WA’s prolific Southern Cross region, to the south of the Marvel Loch 3 million ounce mine and the Yilgarn Star 2Moz deposit and north of the 2Moz Bounty gold deposit.
A major targeting exercise by the company’s geological team has identified 18 high-quality gold prospects in the north-eastern sector of the project including Dulcie Laterite Pit, Dulcie North, Dulcie Far North and Estrela.
First pass drilling of these prospects last year produced strong gold results of 32m at 9.4g/t, including 9m at 31.4g/t at Dulcie North (with the highest individual 1m sample returning 199.2g/t gold); and 2m at 9.8g/t open to the north and south at Estrela.
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