Medallion Metals hits pocket of extremely high grade gold at WA Ravensthorpe play

ASX-listed smallcap Medallion Metals (ASX:MM8) reported hitting a pocket of extremely high grade gold at its Ravensthorpe Gold Project (RGP) at the ‘Flag’ deposit on Tuesday. 

Investor information provider Undervalued Equity classifies high grade gold as that in concentrations of five grams of gold per tonne of ore (5g/t) or above. Many Australian projects boasting grades around 4g/t are also considered high-grade.

Compare that to the following results from Medallion on Tuesday: 

• 0.45m @ 118g/t gold, 9.3% copper & 61g/t silver from 319m depth

• 0.92m @ 34.2g/t gold from 283m depth

Making sense of the news 

Worth considering is that today’s results are incredibly brief, as far as drill lengths go. The Diamond Drill (DD) core sample in question boasting the unusually high grades comes in at under half a metre, with another core boasting 34g/t being less than one metre. 

Investors would also be wise to note the intensive depths the DD cores are pulled from, at over 300m underground. The Flag deposit overlies the Ravensthorpe Greenstone Belt.

Underground mine on cards 

Should the company find a large gold deposit at that depth, it would require significant capital to get that deep to mine it. 

“These results, combined with previous drilling and historical underground mapping gives us great confidence the deposit can be mined successfully from underground,” Medallion chief Paul Bennett said. 

The company intends to make Tuesday’s  results part of its upcoming Mineral Resource Estimate (MRE) for the project, which will ultimately enhance the bankability of the RGP. 

All in all, an attractive MRE inclusive of these high-grade finds would have more chance of being bankrolled all the way to an underground mine. There is no guarantee, as of yet, that this will occur. 

Want to know more? 

Using Market Index’s free company data, investors can make a number of early-stage considerations about Medallion Metals, including but not limited to: 

• Share price of 15.5c* 

• Market cap of $21.6m* 

• One year returns down -36.7% 

• Year to date performance flat 

• Ranked 516 of 943 materials sector companies 

• Company had $5.1m in cash at end of September quarter 

• It spent $1.3m in opex over the same period 

• Company has not raised capital since 

*As at 1030 AEST Tuesday 24 January 2023 

MM8's one year charts