Marmota expands SA gold drilling to 26,000m

Marmota Ltd project aerial view, looking north from the company’s Mainwood zone towards its developing Greenewood gold deposit.

Marmota (ASX: MEU) has stepped up its hunt for more ounces at its emerging Greenewood high-grade gold discovery in South Australia, expanding its current drilling campaign by 30 per cent to an estimated 26,000 metres after some early success from the program.

The company says its stage-three reverse-circulation (RC) drilling program at Greenewood and the adjoining Mainwood zone to the south has been increased from its originally planned 20,000m across 220 holes to 26,000m in 289 holes. The program is expected to wrap up by the end of August.

The latest campaign expansion follows a rapid ramp-up in exploration activity at the project. Just two weeks ago Marmota reported it had blasted through 20,000m of new drilling since launching the campaign in April and hinted then that program would likely be enlarged.

The Greenewood-Mainwood system forms part of Marmota’s Golden Moon joint venture in northern part of the company’s expansive tenure in South Australia’s highly prospective Gawler Craton.

The two prospects lie 35 kilometres northwest of the company’s flagship Aurora Tank gold deposit and just 30km northeast of the historic Challenger gold mine, which produced an estimated 1.2 million ounces of gold between 2002 and 2018.

The Challenger gold mine remains under care and maintenance, although current owner Barton Gold is progressing a definitive feasibility study for a possible phased restart.

Marmota says the Greenewood drilling program is focused on growing the core Greenewood zone while continuing to probe the Mainwood extensions to the south. The company is also seeking to grow the project's resource base and infill sparsely drilled areas to support an indicated resource estimate for its ongoing scoping study.

Our Greenewood program has been yielding some of the best gold results in the Gawler Craton since the discovery of Challenger in 1995.   Marmota Ltd Chairman Dr Colin Rose

Rose said that by the end of August, he expects to have completed more than 50,000m of RC drilling at Greenewood within 13 months.

The company has already completed 223 holes, comprising 90 holes at Greenewood and 133 holes at Mainwood, with the campaign targeting a mineralised footprint stretching for more than 2km along strike.

Greenewood has quickly become one of Marmota’s standout discoveries. Prior to its involvement, the deposit had only seen an estimated 7000m of historical RC drilling. Mainwood was even more lightly touched, with only around 3700m drilled before the maiden campaign at Mainwood was launched this year.

Results from earlier drilling have been impressive. In its March quarterly report Marmota highlighted multiple thick, high-grade gold hits, including 44m at 2.3 grams per tonne (g/t) gold from 16m, 36m at 3g/t from 64m and a standout 33m grading 10g/t gold from 22m.

The maiden drilling campaign transformed Greenewood into a 900m-long zone of near-continuous mineralisation and identified a series of high-grade shoots which remain open in multiple directions.

Marmota says the proximity of Greenewood and Mainwood to its Aurora Tank deposit creates “obvious economies of scope and scale”. Earlier metallurgical testwork at Aurora Tank has pointed to the potential for low-cost open-pit heap leach gold production.

The company says each stage of drilling to date has delivered strong gold grades and materially enhanced the scale of the discovery, with the expanded campaign focused equally on growing the core Greenewood zone while continuing to probe the potential Mainwood extensions to the south.

With drilling nearing completion and assays pending, the market will be watching closely to see whether the expanded program can maintain Greenewood’s run of standout gold results and translate that success into a a substantially larger resource.

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