Sunshine Metals is adding another asset to its North Queensland gold portfolio with a $1.225 million agreement to buy the Sybil project, 135km west of Townsville, from a private owner.

The company said Sybil contained known, high-grade gold and the acquisition suited its strategy to identify shallow oxide gold resources for potential processing.

“Sybil represents an under-explored gold project with exceptional, near-surface gold drilling and rock chip sample results which serves our strategy of achieving near-term production while expanding our district presence around Charters Towers,” Sunshine managing director Damien Keys said.

“Sybil shares many commonalities with the 4Moz gold Pajingo mine near Charters Towers in that both are epithermal gold systems of the same age, hosted in similar rocks and sharing the same geochemical signatures.

“There is a fantastic opportunity to apply recent learnings on epithermal systems to a well-mapped region that has not been extensively explored.”

The consideration for the acquisition includes $125,000 cash and $1.1 million in Sunshine shares, staged on resource and production milestones.

Sybil’s most advanced prospect, Francis Creek, contains 108 drill holes, with results including: 7m at 10.6g/t gold from 7m downhole, 3m at 23.2g/t gold from 6m, 6m at 10.5g/t gold from 7m, 6m at 8.4g/t gold from 5m, and 4m at 11.6g/t gold from 4m.

A bulk sample collected in 1991 and processed through the Ravenswood Gold plant produced 961t at 7.6g/t gold (235oz gold).