PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Junior gold miner Silver Lake Resources has reported a 400% increase in the mineral resource at its Maxwells project, within the Mount Monger project, in Western Australia.
Following an accelerated exploration programme, the project was now estimated to host a resource of 1.69-million tonnes, grading 5.67 g/t gold for 307 000 oz of contained gold.
Some 891 000 t of the resource, grading at 6.01 g/t gold for 172 000 oz of the resource, was classified as indicated, accounting for 56% of the total mineral resource.
MD Luke Tonkin said on Friday that the substantial increase to the resource at Maxwells was incredibly encouraging.
“Maxwells has been one of our highest priority exploration projects since August 2015 and, while the updated resource is a key milestone, we continue to see great opportunity to further increase the resource both at depth and along strike.”
Tonkin noted that the potential underground development at Maxwells supported by the updated mineral resource, was expected to make a meaningful contribution to Silver Lake’s key objective of delivering new ore sources that would sustain and enhance the company’s margins to drive shareholder return.
“Consistent with this objective, board approval to commence underground development of Maxwells will be sought by the end of the current quarter,” Tonkin added.
Silver Lake had previously revealed plans to develop a 45 000 oz/y underground operation at Maxwells.