Navarre’s new assays show 75g/t gold mineralisation at surface; second open pit on the cards

Navarre Minerals (ASX:NML) is defying another red Friday on the ASX (though not as bad as Thursday,) retaining small gains in its share price in the second hour of trade. 

The gains come on new confirmation the company intersected gold, copper, and silver at its Mt. Carlton play in North Queensland. 

Back in April, the company found all three metals at the same location, with today’s results adding to a building confidence in company management Mt. Carlton will offer desirable fruits to shareholders and investment partners.

The frontispiece highlight of today’s announcement is a one metre section of core coming in at a whopping 77 grams of gold per tonne of ore (77g/t), over double bonanza grade (~32g/t). 

Further open pit potential 

Navarre already has an open pit at Mt. Carlton, the ‘V2’ prospect. 

Most notably, the newly announced one metre section of abnormally high grade gold at over 75g/t is present at surface, at only 1m depth. 

Were that assay result found to be replicable across a broad mineralised area at the project, Mt. Carlton’s mine economics could feasibly lend itself to another open-pit operation. 

This conclusion has been conceded by the Queensland state government, which awarded Navarre approval for an open pit mine development. Working towards this end-goal is what drilling is now working to achieve.

What grades are we talking? 

Investor information provider Undervalued Equity classifies high-grade mineralisation across today’s relevant metals as follows: 

• Gold: over 5g/t 

• Copper: over 1.5% concentration

• Silver: over 50g/t

Compare that to the results Navarre is announcing today: 

Prospect: Mt. Carlton United 

• 25m @ 6.3g/t gold, 28g/t silver and 0.1% copper, including: 

  • 05m @ 17g/t gold (14m depth) 

• 12m @ 8.1g/t gold & 41g/t silver, including: 

  • 01m @ 77.4g/t gold (at surface)

Prospect : BV7

• 15m @ 11.4g/t gold & 7.7g/t silver, including: 

  • 09m @ 19g/t gold (80m depth) 

With depths ranging from surface (1m) to 80m depth, it is clear that at least some sections of the Mt. Carlton acreage contain broad mineralisation, in terms of vertical depth. 

The third result at 15m was pulled from the ‘BV7’ prospect, while the first two are taken from the ‘Mt. Carlton United’ prospect. 

Today’s results are announced from a batch of RC drilling results for 2,360m of core equivalent completed in September 2022. 

Drilling remains ongoing at the project. 

Open pit JORC growth Management’s focus 

“Our work continues to demonstrate the project development opportunities present within the broader Mt Carlton project area, which now include five potential satellite gold, silver + copper deposits to supplement existing production from the V2 open pit,” Navarre Minerals MD Ian Holland said. 

“In the meantime, drilling continues on the Mt Carlton mine lease, focused on further opportunities to grow our Mineral Resource inventory, particularly in support of our newly approved open pit mine at MCU.”

“It’s great to see consistently strong results being generated from our investment in drilling at Mt Carlton.”

Navarre's one year charts