Please tell us about Nova Minerals. With such a large gold trend and the rapid resource growth, what are the core aims of the company in the short, medium and long term?
We are planning aggressive drilling programmes as we continue to advance our economic studies on our path to production. In the short term, we will see further drill results from the RPM and Korbel deposit areas where this year we will have drilled over 30,000m. The objectives of these drilling programmes are firstly to prove up existing resources to Indicated status with infill drilling and to increase the resources with by stepping out along strike as well as proximal targets within the same mineralized system.
Certainly, from what we have seen in the assay results returned thus far, combined with the geology we are observing in the drill holes, it gives us confidence that these objectives will be achieved. In the medium term, these additional drilling results are the key to calculate an updated resource inventory for the Estelle Gold Project which we expect to exceed 10Moz global gold resources with a substantial portion in the Measured and Indicated categories.
Concurrently, our economic studies are progressing full steam ahead with the Phase 2 Scoping Study expected to be completed in early 2023. Following on from a positive Phase 1 study on the bulk tonnage Korbel resource only, the Phase 2 study will now also include the very high-grade RPM resource in the production schedule which currently stands at 1.5Moz at an average grade of 2.0g/t Au.
Longer term, we will be going straight into the PFS whereby next level metallurgical and environmental studies are already underway, and on to the DFS, then permitting and decision to mine from there. Our plan is to be digging up the first dirt and pouring gold by 2026. It is ambitious no doubt, but there are critical components to this process working in our favour and falling into place. There are exciting times ahead in our aggressive pursuit of joining the exclusive club of major global gold producers someday soon.
Nova Minerals’ two active projects are on the one major gold trend, the Korbel Gold Project and the RPM Gold Project, located in North America. Please give readers some background to each one, as well as the Estelle Gold trend, often referred to as the “Carlin of the North” in general.
Our flagship Estelle Gold Project is a located within the Tintina Gold Belt in Alaska, which has been one of the most prolific belts in recent times with over 220Moz of documented gold resources, with many of these already in production, or soon to be, e.g. Kinross’s (TSX: K) Fort Knox and Victoria Gold’s (TSX: VGCX) Dublin Gulch. 10Moz+ gold deposits are commonplace in our neighbourhood’ it’s “elephant country”, as they say, and absolutely littered with behemoth gold deposits, which is certainly what we are on to something reflected by the deposits already defined and discovered to date at Estelle, with further discoveries in the works from our ongoing regional exploration programmes.
The Estelle Gold Project is a 450km2 claim block situated along a >35km long mineralized corridor known as the Estelle Gold Trend. The project area is bracketed by Korbel in the North and RPM in the South, already defined large gold deposits comprising 9.6Moz to date and increasing rapidly as the deposits remain wide open.
In between, we have over 20 other known prospects at various stages of advancement, so we have truly only scratched the surface and with just three years of operations under our belt, we are just getting started. Last year, we reported further discoveries at Train, which appears to be another massive IRGS deposit, as well as at Stoney where we have an extensive Polymetallic Au-Ag-Cu stacked vein system. We continue with our systematic exploration programmes, so expect frequent news flow.
People need to understand that the project is not a one or even two-mine wonder. What we are onto here is pretty special if not unique in today’s resource environment. We are unlocking a world-class district in a tier one jurisdiction with potentially tens of millions of resource ounces supporting decades of mine life across the wider Estelle Gold Trend.
From my experience working for many years across the legendary Carlin Trend in Nevada, a premier gold mining centre in the Americas which wade companies like Newmont (NYSE: NEM) and Barrick (TSX: ABX) the powerhouses they are today, the similarities are striking. The geology is different, sure. However, what is developing here along the Estelle Gold Trend in terms of scale and resource growth and potential is very similar to Nevada’s Carlin Trend. No doubt, Estelle is shaping up to be “the Carlin of the North”.
Recently, Nova has released frequent news flow regarding the RPM Gold Project, with several high-grade gold interceptions reported. What’s next for RPM?
RPM is a jewel in the crown at the Estelle Gold Project. The RPM North zone is extremely high grade with a defined resource currently at 1.5Moz at an average grade of 2.0g/t. Thick bonanza grade drill intercepts abound throughout this zone. I’m talking about hits like in hole RPM-005 with 132m @ 10.1g/t within a larger intercept of 400m @ 3.5g/t, RPM-008 with 260m @ 3.6g/t including 140m @ 6.5g/t, and RPM-015 with 258m @ 5.1g/t including 78m @ 16.0g/t. These are a just a few examples and are results destined for the record books by any measure. RPM has been our focus of drilling this year, with the primary objective being to prove up the existing resource at RPM North to include this high-grade resource into the production schedule of the Phase 2 Scoping Study, which is currently in progress.
RPM was not able to be included in the Phase 1 study due to ASX guidelines around inclusion of Inferred Resources at the time. We have now already completed the requisite drilling to prove up a substantial portion of the resource to Measured and Indicated status which will feed into our upcoming Phase 2 Scoping Study, which by all indications thus far will be very positive indeed across the board in terms of the key economic and technical metrics. To note, the metallurgical testwork at RPM has shown higher grade, higher recovery correlation where we achieve over 96% gold leach recovery. It’s very encouraging to continue to confirm that the gold within deposits at Estelle can be so easily liberated using off the shelf conventional technology, and the ore is “clean” with very little in the way of deleterious elements.
There remains abundant upside at RPM. One zone we have been particularly focused on is RPM South, just a few hundred meters away from the North Zone and likely connected at depth. At RPM South our surface sampling shows a much larger footprint. We have now drilled into the South Zone as well with assay results pending, however we are observing all the key geological indicators that show a genetic link to the North Zone. The area in between these two zones now opens up a vast area of further upside potential that will be targeted with drilling in the near term. All of this bodes well for further significant increases to the overall RPM area resource as we move forward.
Drilling is continuing at the Korbel Gold Project. What is the company’s goal, and can you tell us about the high-grade feeder system within the Korbel deposit and the potential at Cathedral with the wider Korbel valley?
Korbel is massive bulk mineable IRGS system. The Korbel Main deposit gold resource currently stands at 8.1Moz including 3.0Moz in the higher confidence Indicated category. While Korbel Main is on average overall lower grade relative to RPM, the technical characteristics of the deposit make it a highly profitable deposit in its own right, which we have clearly demonstrated in the recent Phase 1 Scoping Study whereby Korbel Main alone delivers an NPV of almost $400M.
Some of the positive characteristics include, firstly, excellent metallurgy with gold easily liberated and recovered using off the shelf conventional process technology, but also mineralization starting at surface, single homogenous ore type, and a broad continuous wide open ore body geometry that is like a sea of mineralization through the entire host rock. All of this lends itself to a very low strip ratio and further highly profitable mining economics.
The gold is concentrated in very high-grade, discreet, centimetre-scale sheeted veins with distinct gold bearing quartz-arsenopyrite mineralogy. Selective sampling of the veins consistently return bonanza grades with several oz/tonne common. Higher grade zones are directly correlated to higher vein densities. A higher-grade core feeder zone within Korbel Main is confirmed by consistent 50-100m wide infill drilling intercepts averaging above 1g/t. This material represents direct mill feed and contains over 1Moz of the total Korbel Main resource.
Surrounding this higher-grade core are hundreds of millions of tonnes of additional resource a relatively lower grade above a 0.3g/t cutoff which highly profitable due to its exceptional amenability to ore sorting. As laid out in the Phase 1 Scoping Study, test work has shown that due to the nature of the gold being concentrated in high density discreet veins this lower grade material can be upgraded to up to 6g/t through the ore sorters as a grade control measure prior to being fed to the mill. So Korbel Main is a very exciting deposit that alone will provide us with 15 years of mine life, and this year the infill drilling was completed to prove up the extent of the deposit to Indicated status which we will see in the upcoming resource update.
The Korbel Main represents just one zone within the wider Korbel Valley. There are numerous further targets we have yet to drill. These targets include Block C & D, Sweet Jenny, You Beauty, Isabella, and Cathedral. It looks like many of these further targets will coalesce and merge into Korbel Main as they are all part of the same massive Korbel Valley Mineralized System, a system which is rapidly shaping up to be one of these 10Moz+ whopper IRGS deposits not uncommon in our neighbourhood throughout the Tintina Gold Province.
The highest ranked target for us now is Cathedral, which we are drilling now. We have really honed in on this Cathedral target and believe it to be the central core of the Korbel Valley mineralized system, with high grade surface sample results up to 114g/t Au. It is early in the programme, and no assay results have been returned as yet from the ongoing drilling programme here. However, the rocks thus far have all the right stuff, which is very encouraging indeed.
Is the company planning to explore elsewhere across the Estelle Gold trend?
Absolutely. Not just planning, but we are actively engaged in doing this, having just completed another hugely successful exploration campaign carried out over the past few months. We are really starting to hone in on another massive mineralized system in the Train-Muddy Creek-Mount Estelle area, the golden triangle, as we call it. Hundreds of rock samples have been collected across kilometres of traverses across this area. We are seeing sprawling mineralized sheeted vein complexes and massive gold bearing arsenopyrite boulders. Assay results will start to trickle in over the coming months where we expect further significant discoveries to be reported. The next step is to generate targets which we plan to drill as a priority next year.
One thing to understand about exploration at the Estelle Gold Project is that mineralization is on surface and outcropping. It is virgin ground so expensive complex deep searching exploration techniques are not required at this stage. The process is old-school; boots on the ground with geologists literally kicking up new prospective showings every day. As such, our cost per discovery ounce is around US$3.50, which is just phenomenal by industry standards. Expect more exciting news flow to come in the near term with further discoveries and resource inventory growth as we continue on our path towards production.
