Bulk sampling at the Blackridge gold project, 25km north of Clermont, has backed up the project’s potential as a large bulk mining opportunity

Impect Minerals recently completed a second phase of bulk sampling at the site along with wet gravity processing trials.

Gold returned from all 12 trenches taken over 1000m of trend with grades ranging from 0.07g to 2.17g per cubic metre, at an average of 0.36g.

Impact said a 1500m long continuously mineralised near-surface zone was now recognised.

“These results confirm our belief that two unique geological features have combined at Blackridge to offer a potential large bulk mining opportunity: a large volume of very weathered oxide material that is soft and very easy to dig which contains gold that is easily recovered with wet gravity processing,” Impact Minerals managing director Dr Mike Jones said.

“As a result the oxide material could potentially be very cheap to mine and very cheap to process at low cut off grades in the first instance. 

“We have now demonstrated that this oxide material extends for at least 1500m along trend and could extend to some depth based on this and previous work.

“Our challenge now is to better determine overall grade and we are considering our options for even larger scale sampling given that we have one granted mining lease and four mining lease applications in progress that cover all of this extensive area.”