Kalamazoo Resources has delivered a volley of broad, high-grade gold hits from a major drill campaign at the company’s 1.44-million-ounce Ashburton gold project in Western Australia as it targets resource growth to underpin a production profile of more than one million ounces.
The results came from a resource definition program at the Mt Olympus deposit, a key step in the company’s transition from explorer to developer and in completing a pre-feasibility study.
Initial assays from the first 16 holes of a near-complete 14,000-metre reverse circulation and diamond drilling program have returned a string of impressive intercepts.
Headlining the act was a 21-metre section grading a solid 6.5 grams per tonne (g/t) gold from just 12m downhole, which included a richer 10-metre slice going 13g/t gold.
Other significant results from the drilling include a hefty 50-metre intercept at 2.6g/t gold from 129m along with a 30-metre strike grading 3.6g/t gold from 51m. Further wide zones of mineralisation included 63m at 1.9g/t, 47m at 2.0g/t and 45m at 2.0g/t gold.
Management says nine intersections exceeded 50 gram-metres, a key industry metric that combines grade and width to highlight the significance of a drill hit.
The 14,000m campaign has been designed as an infill program across the open pit resource, tightening drill spacing to a dense 20m-by-20m pattern in key areas. It has also been used to test below the A$4000-per-ounce pit shell defined in a 2025 scoping study.
The primary objective is to increase geological confidence and support the conversion of the project’s inferred resources to the higher-certainty indicated category, a crucial step in de-risking the project for potential development.
The Mt Olympus deposit, with its existing 1.07-million-ounce resource, is the cornerstone of the wider Ashburton project’s total global inventory of 1.436 million ounces running at 2.8g/t gold. The broader footprint also includes the high-grade Zeus deposit, which hosts 121,000 ounces of gold at 2.5g/t and the Waugh deposit, with 32,000 ounces of gold at 1.9g/t.
These exciting results reinforce our view that Ashburton has the scale and quality to support a long-life major gold operation. As we advance the PFS, our focus remains on unlocking further resource growth and maximising the value of the Mt Olympus Project’s long-term production potential.
Sitting 35 kilometres south-east of the mining town of Paraburdoo, Mt Olympus is a brownfields play, benefiting from a wealth of historical data from previous operators who produced 350,000 ounces from the deposit between 1998 and 2004.
While the Pilbara is a key focus, the company also maintains a strategic foothold in Victoria’s prolific Bendigo zone, holding ground in the historic Castlemaine goldfield, which has coughed up 5.6 million ounces of gold since the late 1800’s.
With the bulk of assays from the 14,000m campaign at Mt Olympus still to come, including the deeper holes beneath the pit shell and extension drilling, Kalamazoo has flagged a steady stream of news flow over the next quarter.
The complete results will feed into an updated mineral resource estimate, targeted for the fourth quarter of this year, which will then underpin the all-important prefeasibility study scheduled for the first half of 2027.
With Kalamazoo already holding a near 1.5-million-ounce card and a prefeasibility study on the horizon, the steady flow of assays from the remainder of this program will, no doubt, be watched closely by punters.
If the initial hits are a sign of things to come, this Pilbara gold play might just be rounding the corner towards development.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@wanews.com.au
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