New Zealand specialist Siren Gold (ASX:SNG) is targeting the expansion of the company’s exploration focus at its key projects with potential for a multi-million-ounce gold discovery.
Drilling over the next 12 months will focus on Alexander River, Big River and Sams Creek Gold Projects. Reconnaissance exploration will also continue at St George, Lyell and Doyles with initial drilling planned for 2023.
Initial testwork on Alexander and Big River metallurgical samples indicates that a gold recovery of approximately 90-92% could be achieved by flotation, pressure oxidation and cyanide leaching with up to 30% gravity gold recoverable from Alexander River samples. Sams Creek metallurgical samples averaged 87% recovery through a similar process.
Siren is also investigating the use of advanced ore sorting beneficiation technologies that will reduce waste material and upgrade the Reefton and Sams Creek ores prior to trucking to a centrally located high grade processing facility.
GR Engineering Services (GRES) has been engaged by Siren Gold to conduct a Scoping Study (SS) for a processing plant and associated infrastructure to treat mineralisation derived from the company’s exploration properties. The Study is well advanced.
Background
Western New Zealand was originally part of Gondwana and lay adjacent to eastern Australia until around 80 Ma ago. The NW of the South Island of New Zealand comprises an area of predominantly early Paleozoic rocks in broad northerly trending belts which terminate at the Alpine Fault. The Paleozoic sequence is divided into the Buller Terrane, Takaka Central and Takaka Eastern Belts.
These belts are interpreted to correspond with the Western, Central and Eastern belts of the Lachlan Fold Belt. The Buller and Western Lachlan belts contain the orogenic gold deposits like Bendigo, Ballarat and Fosterville in Australia and the Reefton, Lyell and Golden Blocks Goldfields in New Zealand. The Sams Creek porphyry dyke (SCD) deposit is located in the Eastern Takaka Terrane, which is equivalent to the Eastern Lachlan belt that hosts porphyry copper-gold deposits like Cadia and Ridgeway.
There are two distinctive sub-types of orogenic gold mineralisation in Victoria. The deeper (6-12kms) mesothermal deposits that formed almost all the significant gold deposits in the Bendigo and Stawell zones and the shallower (<6km) epizonal gold deposits in the Melbourne zone and eastern Bendigo zone, including Fosterville. The latter gold mineralising event in Victoria is characterised by acicular arsenopyrite / pyrite hosted refractory gold and stibnite associated gold, which are indicative of a shallower emplacement depth. The gold mineralisation at Reefton like Fosterville is also associated with acicular arsenopyrite and stibnite mineralisation.
Strategy
Siren’s strategy is to grow its Exploration Targets organically with continued drill-focused exploration on the Companies key projects over the next 24 months.
Exploration over the next 12 months will focus on Alexander River and Big River in Reefton where Exploration Targets and an Inferred Resource have already been estimated, and Main Zone and SE Traverse at Sams Creek, where an Inferred and Indicated Resource has been estimated.
Exploration will also be advanced at St George, Lyell and Doyles with initial drilling planned for 2023.
For further information please visit: https://www.sirengold.com.au
