Mine benefits for gold exploration

The re-opening of Stawell Gold Mine is likely to provide mining development group Navarre Minerals with processing options as it explores potential of its flagship Irvine Gold Project.

The mine, which Victorian Resources Minister Tim Pallas formally re-opened last week and is scheduled to return to production in early 2019, is 20 kilometres north of the Irvine project site.

Navarre Minerals managing director Geoff Mcdermott said mine development, while an obvious boost for the regional economy, also offered broader opportunities to the mining sector in the region.

He said future treatment of economic gold mineralisation from Irvine at a nearby operational processing facility would be of substantial benefit to the project’s ‘development pathway timeline’.

“The re-opening of Stawell Gold Mine has added 65 new jobs, with the workforce set to grow further,” Mr Mcdermott said.

“It also offers a practical, nearby processing solution for the Irvine Gold Project should we be successful converting our recent gold discoveries into economic mineral deposits.”

Navarre Minerals considers the Irvine Gold Project, within a 30-kilometre stretch of a Stawell Gold Corridor that runs between Stawell and Ararat, to be geologically similar to Stawell’s Magdala gold deposit.

The Irvine Gold Project includes the historic 19th century Ararat Goldfield that produced about one million ounces of alluvial gold.

Navarre Minerals has located two gold lodes or deposits called Resolution and Adventure, by exploring the flanks of a large basalt dome that underlies terrain north of Ararat.

In December 2016, Resolution’s ‘discovery hole’ revealed a six-metre-wide ‘intercept’ with a grade of 6.3 grams of gold per tonne.

The best exploration result came in May this year with research showing an 18.7-metre intercept with 7.1 grams of gold per tonne.

Navarre Minerals plans to embark on a deeper drilling campaign aimed at converting the discoveries into what it hopes will be a large gold system.

It hopes to announce a maiden mineral resource next year.

Arete Capital Partners is operating Stawell Gold Mine and will restart processing ore next year after successful drilling programs.

Chief executive Campbell Olsen said his company saw the Irvine Gold Project as a future source of ore.

“This is a great advance for regional Victoria and the gold mining industry,” he said.

Stawell and Ararat are part of Victoria’s historic ‘golden triangle’ goldfields, which played a key part of the development of western Victoria.

“The re-opening of Stawell Gold Mine has added 65 new jobs, with the workforce set to grow further. It also offers a practical, nearby processing solution for the Irvine Gold Project” – Geoff Mcdermott