Kalamazoo Resources unearths stunning WA gold drill hits
- Murray Ward
- 2 hours ago
- 3 min read
Kalamazoo Resources (ASX: KZR) has hit paydirt in spectacular fashion at its 1.07-million-ounce Mt Olympus gold project in WA with a litany of drill results that would easily rank alongside the best numbers seen this year.
In what the company says is one of the strongest intersections ever recorded at the project one 36-metre hit came in at an impressive 16 grams per tonne (g/t) gold from 181m and that included and even more impressive 10m core going a whopping 49 grams per tonne gold from 202m.
Proving that the project boasts both length and grade, a second, hefty, 74m section showed a respectable 4.1g/t gold from 144m, which in turn housed a higher-grade slice of 17m running at 8.3g/t gold.
Kalamazoo’s Ashburton project lies 35 kilometres south-east of Paraburdoo in one of Australia’s premier mining jurisdictions. It is a classic brownfields revival story, with the area having historically produced 350,000 ounces of gold between 1998 and 2004.
The company is also spreading its wings beyond its existing resource, having recently submitted applications for six additional exploration licences adjacent to the project. If granted, the move would expand its wholly owned Ashburton landholding by almost 192 square kilometres, bringing it to a district-scale 519 square kilometres.
The results come from a now-completed 72-hole resource definition drilling program which the company says has reinforced its confidence in the quality and growth potential of the Pilbara-based asset.
The 20 holes reported in Kalamazoo’s latest announcement returned an impressive 15 intersections greater than 50 gram-metres, a measure that multiplies grade by width to show the overall tenor of a drill hit.
The two headliners came in at a whopping 590 and 300 gram-metres, respectively.
The company says the drilling demonstrates broad, high-grade mineralisation and has helped identify multiple high-grade quartz veins that are interpreted as crucial feeder structures for the gold system.
Notably, the drilling has intersected mineralisation both within and beyond the current mineral resource model, suggesting solid potential to add new ounces while shoring up any mining plan to be wrapped around the existing resource. Importantly, some of the new gold hits sit inside the conceptual pit shell from a scoping study completed late last year, which could make any resource additions potentially more economically compelling.
The impressive results provide powerful validation for Kalamazoo’s recent oversubscribed $8 million placement, which saw strong demand from sophisticated and institutional players. The funds were raised specifically to accelerate growth at Ashburton, and the company has wasted no time in putting that cash to work.
These results strengthen Mt Olympus as the foundation asset for a potentially long-life Ashburton gold operation. They provide further support for the current PFS work while highlighting the opportunity to increase the future mining inventory through continued resource growth. Kalamazoo Resources CEO Andrew McDougall
The company’s geological model points to high-grade feeder structures dominated by quartz-sulphide veins that are sub-parallel to the main Zoe fault at Mount Olympus.
The 36m intercept at 16g/t gold hit one of these sub-vertical structures, with a central quartz-sulphide vein returning the incredible 10m section at 49g/t gold. A peak one metre assay from within that zone hit a spectacular 241g/t gold and was associated with visible gold in the drill core.
With the 13,726m resource definition drilling program now complete, assays from 43 of the 72 holes have been received, leaving a strong pipeline of news flow still to come that will no doubt be highly anticipated by the market.
The fresh results will feed into an updated mineral resource estimate for Mt Olympus which is slated for the final quarter of this year. Following that, the company is aiming to deliver a prefeasibility study in the first quarter of 2027.
Having spun out its lithium assets into the newly listed Kali Metals earlier in the year, Kalamazoo is now a focused gold explorer with its saddlebags full after its recent capital raise. With the drill bit delivering the goods at its flagship Ashburton project and more assay results coming down the pipe, it appears as though things could get interesting very quickly for the Perth-based explorer that fortuitously wrestled this project back from mega-miner Northern Star. Northern Star inherited an option over it from DeGrey Mining when the latter company was taken over for around $5b. Having given its chequebook a mighty working over to buy DeGrey, Northern Star opted not to proceed with its Ashburton option and Kalamazoo got the entire project back – every now and then David has a win when battling Goliath and with a 36m hit going 16 grams, this would appear to be one of those moments.
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