Native Mineral Resources has delivered an updated Granite Castle resource of 620Kt at 3.22g/t gold for 64.5Koz gold and 62g/t silver for 1.24Moz silver.

Granite Castle lies 170km west of NMR’s Blackjack operations in the Charters Towers area, where gold production commenced last month.

“With the Granite Castle resource now at JORC 2012 standard, NMR can work towards fast-tracking Granite Castle to a mine-ready status,” NMR managing director Blake Cannavo said.

“With this mineral resource estimate in place, we will look to identify additional resources at Granite Castle.

“The updated MRE provides NMR with a basis for future resource definition and sets Granite Castle up as a compelling and strategically significant emerging gold development project.”

Mr Cannavo said that as Granite Castle was located within trucking distance of the company’s operations at Blackjack, adding to its MRE had the potential to provide a larger scale and longer life gold production profile.

“Future work will include further drilling to expand the resource, and metallurgical testwork that will lead to a scoping study for Granite Castle’s development,” he said.

NMR appointed H & S Consultants to upgrade the existing 2008 Granite Castle (MRE) in accordance with the 2012 JORC code and guidelines.