Kalamazoo Resources is set to test and drill the down plunge extents of existing resources beneath its Mt Olympus pit shell design and multiple brownfields prospects at its Ashburton gold project in northern Western Australia.
Ashburton already hosts a 1.44-million-ounce gold resource at 2.8 grams per tonne gold. The company has now set its sights on banking additional ounces from a proposed underground section beneath the current open pit design.
The campaign is the first phase of future drilling programs that will test a broadened pipeline of brownfields and greenfields targets across a seven-kilometre structural corridor that includes the proposed underground beneath the West Olympus and Mt Olympus open pit shells. The results will provide important early inputs for ongoing mine development and optimisation studies supporting the Mt Olympus pre-feasibility study.
A recent re-optimisation of the Mt Olympus underground resource model has lifted that inventory to 1.44 million tonnes at 3.76 grams per tonne gold for 174,500 ounces. This follows a newly defined underground exploration target beneath the proposed pit shell ranging between 350,000 and 500,000 ounces at 2.0–3.8 g/t, which includes the existing underground resource.
The renewed focus on underground and regional targets comes weeks after Kalamazoo’s scoping study confirmed Mt Olympus could produce 524,000 ounces over a 73-month mine life at an all-in sustaining cost as low as $2,183 per ounce. The proposed development centres on an integrated Mt Olympus–West Olympus open pit, averaging 2.2 g/t gold with a nine-to-one strip ratio. Average production is forecast at 73,000 ounces a year, peaking at 110,000 ounces in year five.
Kalamazoo is also casting a wider net across its Ashburton tenure, pointing to significant brownfields potential at Peake, Zeus and Waugh – nearby gold deposits that together hold more than 360,000 ounces along the broader Mt Olympus corridor. Historical drilling at these prospects has turned up intercepts including 6 metres at 2.84 g/t gold at West Olympus and 9 metres at 5.52 g/t at Waugh.
