White Rock Acquires Highly Prospective Victorian Gold Package
Ballarat, Sep 7, 2021 AEST (ABN Newswire) - White Rock Minerals Limited (
ASX:WRM) (WRMCF:OTCMKTS) is pleased to announce the completion of the Merger with AuStar Gold Ltd ('AuStar'). The Merger of White Rock and AuStar was completed on 23 August 2021 and White Rock assumed ownership on that day.
Overview
White Rock has now taken possession of the Woods Point Gold Project, an exciting asset that offers a significant value creation opportunity for Shareholders.
Woods Point includes a highly prospective exploration area of 670km2 in one of Victoria's largest historic goldfields, as well as a past producing mine that has produced over 800,000 ounces at an average grade of 26.5g/t and an 80,000tpa gravity gold processing plant. Importantly, it also comes with a highly skilled and qualified workforce of some 23 personnel.
This asset comes into White Rock at a time when Victorian gold exploration and production is experiencing an exciting renaissance, led by Fosterville and Costerfield, now among the ten highest grade gold mines globally. White Rock is taking a long-term view on this opportunity, and while our new mine also has potential to produce gold at grades that could see it in the top ten in Australia, the immediate focus is on ceasing production to divert the focus toward underground exploration with the goal of building a resource base sufficient to define a long-term production plan and ensure a sustainable and profitable operation.
The regional landholding has geological similarities with the Costerfield Mineralogical Domain that also includes the Fosterville goldfield and presents a vast longer-term opportunity. White Rock intends to take some time to develop a strategic approach to its exploration plan to ensure that a systematic and modern exploration program is executed across both the regional and in-mine priority targets.
Managing Director and CEO, Matt Gill said:
"The acquisition of the Woods Point Gold Project in Victoria offers significant opportunities in this undervalued, in demand, large, highly prospective exploration tenement package located in one of Victoria's largest historical goldfields. The regional exploration and in-mine potential is significant, and any success here is enabled by the existence of an approved ML, and the small but high-grade functional underground gold mine (Morning Star) and its gold processing plant; Not many junior exploration companies can make that claim.
The addition of this asset compliments White Rock's other assets - our silver-rich zinc VMS and IRGS gold project at Red Mountain in Alaska, and our advanced epithermal gold and silver project at Mt Carrington in NSW. One of White Rock's strengths is its exploration, project development and mining expertise, and we intend to bring that to bear on this asset.
Importantly, given the Company is based in the historical gold mining town of Ballarat, having an asset on our doorstep ensures that we can manage and operate, even in this current restrictive COVID-19 environment.
We intend to pursue a systematic exploration program regionally, where the size of the prize is significant, as well as test the many opportunities that we believe still exist to be drilled and discovered underground at Morning Star."
Dr Quinton Hennigh, advisor to White Rock's major and strategic shareholder, Crescat Capital, said:
"The acquisition of AuStar gives White Rock control over one of the high-grade gems of the Victorian goldfields. As the acquisition is not expected to significantly impact White Rock's current exploration momentum in Alaska, it gives White Rock Shareholders exposure to a potentially high-value year-round exploration asset in one of the most prolific gold belts on earth. Along with this comes the element of gold production at Morning Star which, after a hiatus while in-mine exploration drilling occurs, White Rock plans to ramp up to underpin White Rock's cash flow going forward. Such an acquisition opportunity comes along rarely and is expected to help White Rock build a solid foundation upon which to grow".
In-Mine exploration
Morning Star's mine shaft descends 800 metres, with several stopes worked on by previous owners of the asset. The most notable previous owner was Gold Mines of Australia (GMA), the forerunner to one of Australia's best known resources companies - Western Mining Corporation (WMC). There are considerable opportunities in several areas that have seen little work, in particular the Gap Zone.
Drilling has already commenced, with a second drill commencing soon. Drill results are taking less time in Victorian labs than in some other jurisdictions, which should support quicker turnaround and assay news flow going forward.
Structural studies using historical production figures and previous drilling will be done as a first step to understand what structures have the greatest grade and ounce potential, with the hope of defining future exploration targets for follow-up drilling.
Running two diamond drill rigs full-time underground, the focus will be to test the full length and depth across the Gap Zone as well as extensions to known reefs above 9 level yet to be fully tested.
While the gold processing plant is in good working condition, with recent improvements and planned modifications under consideration, better long-term economics are achievable by being disciplined enough to halt production while gold resources are defined, as opposed to pursuing a 'hand-to-mouth' approach that can be unpredictable and unfavourable for profitable mining and to Shareholders.
Regional exploration
While numerous historic prospects lie across the 670km2 exploration package, minimal systematic prospect exploration has been done to date and public records of modern drilling shows sparse coverage. The area includes over 50 prospects, predominantly dyke-hosted quartz vein mineralisation, with the 'prize' being the discovery of another Walhalla's Cohen Reef, a dyke-margin quartz reef with continuity over 1,500m at high grade (~1Mozs @ ~1oz/t).
*To view tables and figures, please visit:
https://abnnewswire.net/lnk/6JUG10U0
About White Rock Minerals Ltd
White Rock Minerals Ltd (ASX:WRM) (OTCMKTS:WRMCF) is a diversified explorer and near-stage producer, headquartered in Ballarat, Victoria. The Company's flagship exploration project is Red Mountain in central Alaska. At Red Mountain, there are already two high grade zinc - silver - gold - lead VMS deposits, with an Inferred Mineral Resource of 9.1 million tonnes @ 609g/t AgEq / 13% ZnEq. The Company is also exploring its recently discovered large intrusion related gold anomaly at Last Chance, also located in the Tintina gold belt of Alaska, home to multi-million gold ounce deposits like Pogo, Fort Knox and the Donlin Project. The Company also has the Mt Carrington project, located near Drake, in Northern NSW, which is a near-production precious metals asset with a resource of 341,000 ounces of gold and 23.2 million ounces of silver on an approved mining lease, and with a Gold First PFS and JORC Reserve.
| ||
|
