JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – The Jundee gold mine near Wiluna, in Western Australia, is set for a “long, lucrative life”, as Northern Star’s drilling programme has identified extensive new areas of high-grade mineralisation up to 800 m from the existing operations.

MD Bill Beament said on Thursday that the results of the drilling programme were game-changing for the future of Jundee and showed that the mine would continue to operate at, or around, its current production levels for many more years.

“We are finding high-grade gold in every direction we drill and in some cases, almost 1 km from the existing operations.”

Much of the newly identified mineralisation stemmed from in-mine resource and exploration drilling, which had succeeded in expanding the known parameters of at least seven mining areas and resulted in new discoveries of the Armada and Revelation trends.

Initial drilling undertaken from the new drill drive at the base of the mine had hit mineralisation 400 m below the existing mine development, where previous production from this section of the mine totaled 3.2-million ounces at 10 g/t.

Drilling from this platform had also resulted in the ‘Armada’ discovery. The mineralisation has so far been defined over a 300 m strike and open in all directions.

In addition, drilling from both surface and underground locations further up in the mine had defined extensive new mineralisation over a 1 km strike length along the Revelation trend to the south of the mine workings. The company reported that the drilling success to the south had significantly extended the Jundee mineralisation across the Stirling Fault, confirming the seven-million-ounce system steps over the fault and remained open. The Stirling Fault was previously thought to close out the system.

Northern Star said the Revelation trend also held significant promise to the north, with a further 800 m of strike to be tested in this direction back towards the existing mine infrastructure.

The Jundee mine, which Northern Star bought in 2014, produced 222 848 oz in the 2015 financial year, accounting for nearly 40% of the company's total gold production.