With a $450 million-plus expansion project behind it, Ravenswood Gold is continuing to invest in drilling to increase the gold resource around its existing pits as well as exploring further afield.

General manager Dave Mackay said the company had a reverse circulation rig and a diamond rig working on the site for resource extension work at the moment, in addition to grade control drilling carried out as part of the mining cycle.

The operation resumed mining from the historical Sarsfield pit late last year, while mining is also ongoing at its Buck Reef West pit.

“Basically the optimisation on the Sarsfied field pit stops because it runs out of block model and drilling. It doesn’t stop because it runs out of gold,” Mr Mackay said.

“We’re doing more drilling around there to increase the resource around the existing pits. And we also have a couple of prospects just to the south of Ravenswood that are looking promising.”

Work on the tenements – Donnybrook and Helena – had not yet advanced to the point of resource estimates, he said.

“They look exciting. We have some good sample results, but they haven’t got enough data on them to be able to put a number over them yet.”

Ravenswood Gold also holds the Last Chance prospect about 30km north-east of Ravenswood.

“Last Chance is a small mining lease within a larger EPM already in Ravenswood Gold’s tenement package, so it made sense to acquire it when it came on the market,” Mr Mackay said.

“We haven’t yet completed any drilling or detailed investigations, but there are certainly some exciting indicators in the surface mapping rock chip samples that warrant further investigation. 

“There are some old workings within the ML, so that’s always a good place to start looking.”

Mr Mackay said Ravenswood Gold was still ‘making some tweaks’ following the upgrade project, which allows the site to achieve an ongoing production rate of 200,000 oz per annum and adds at least 12 years to the operation’s life.

With gold prices soaring, it is a good time to hit its straps.

“It always helps with the cashflow to get a bit better price,” Mr Mackay said. “We don’t tend to make drastic changes to what we do on the site with regards to cut-off upgrades or anything at the moment.”

The pit boundaries were governed more by available data and heritage constraints, he said.