Warriedar Resources has updated the mineral resource estimate (MRE) for its flagship Ricciardo gold-antimony deposit, revealing what the company believes to be Australia’s largest open pit antimony resource.
The deposit contains a maiden antimony MRE of 12.2 million tonnes (Mt) at 0.5 per cent antimony for 60,300 tonnes (t) of antimony. This equates to 1.96 million ounces (Moz) of gold equivalent ore, a 107 per cent increase from the previous update.
This includes an open-pit MRE of 11.4Mt at 3.3 grams per tonne (g/t) gold equivalent, containing 56,800t of antimony and 331,000 ounces of gold, with 37 per cent of the antimony resource in measured and indicated categories.
“This is an undeniably exciting milestone for Warriedar,” Warriedar managing director and chief executive officer Amanda Buckingham said. “Through a diligent and systematic evaluation of historical drilling data, we have defined Australia’s largest open-pit antimony resource – from a standing start.
“The next phase of advancing the considerable antimony opportunity at Golden Range is launching dedicated antimony-focused drilling, for the first time ever on this tenure, alongside ongoing metallurgical testwork.
“We will undertake this work in parallel with our ongoing primary focus, which is further growing the existing gold resources at Golden Range via targeted extensional and new discovery drilling through 2025 within the highly prospective 25km-long ‘Golden Corridor’.”
The total MRE for Warriedar’s Golden Range and Fields Find projects now stands at 31Mt at 3g/t gold equivalent for 2.3Moz gold equivalent.
The Ricciardo deposit is located in a gold hotspot, with Capricorn Metals’ Mt Gibson project and processing plant, the Golden Grove processing facility and Vault Minerals’ Rothsay mine all located nearby.