Westgold eyes production with 547g/t Mid West gold hit

Westgold Resources has its sights set on production at its Great Fingall project in Western Australia’s Mid West region as soon as next financial year after a 3.03m hit at a “spectacular” 547 grams per tonne gold from 205m at its Fingall Flats target.

Importantly, the latest high-grade results extend the Fingall Flats lodes below its previously interpreted base, with the company pointing out there are a large volume of assays from its latest drill campaign still to come. Fingall Flats is a relatively flat-orientated mineralised quartz reef located in the footwall of the historic, steeply-dipping Great Fingall reef that produced 1.2 million gold ounces at the turn of past century.

Management says a comprehensive drill-out of the shallow areas of Great Fingall has been ongoing since the start of the year, with the campaign focused on Sovereign Reef resource definition between Great Fingall and Golden Crown.

Both the Golden Crown and Great Fingall mines, which are separated by about 700m along the Great Fingall dolerite, have hosted significant historic production, with more than 1.55 million ounces of gold mined there since the late 1800s.

Additional assay highlights from the latest drill campaign include a 17.05m intercept going 8.88g/t gold from 114m, 6m grading 22.13g/t from just 43m and a wider 20.6m section at 4.34g/t from 59.4m.

Management says it de-risked the project last financial year with a major drill campaign targeting the area below the historic workings. In May, the company unveiled an all-encompassing upgraded mineral resource for Great Fingall of 4.3 million tonnes grading 4.3g/t for 588,000 ounces of gold – a 49 per cent increase to its previous estimate of 304,000 gold ounces.

The Fingall Flats represent an early, shallow mining opportunity that could be executed in parallel to advancing the new Fingall decline to the deeper and virgin parts of the iconic Great Fingall Reef. The 3.03m at 547g/t Au drill interval is spectacular and these latest results have extended the high-grade flat structures mined by historic operators below their previously interpreted base.

Between 1891 and 1929, Great Fingall yielded 1.2 million ounces of gold from 1.9 million tonnes of ore at a grade of 19.5g/t. Mining was rebooted in 1995 using open pit methods up until March in 1999, yielding 82,000 gold ounces from 1.8 million tonnes of ore.

Two subsequent open pit campaigns at Great Fingall since 1999, the last by Westgold in 2020, have produced a further 54,000 ounces of gold.

Combined with the nearby Golden Crown mineral resource of 194,000 gold ounces, the Great Fingall development plan is based on a total resource of 782,000 ounces of contained gold.

In August last year, the company’s board approved the return to operations at the site after management presented a conservative base case to produce 2.5 million tonnes of ore at about 5g/t gold for 383,000 ounces at an all-in sustaining cost of $1801 per ounce. It is expected to deliver more than 45,000 gold ounces per year once it reaches a steady state of operation, with an initial mine life of eight years and first ore scheduled for the first half of the 2025 financial year.

All that with an alluring gold price backdrop that is today still hovering at about $3500 an ounce.

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