Everest looking for early cashflows with bulk sampling

Everest Metals has a nice problem – there is too much visible nuggetty gold in the reefs at its Revere gold project near Meekatharra and the company will now turn to a bulk sampling program to get a better handle on the tonnes and grade at the project.

The company will look to extract 36,000 tonnes from Revere in a bulk sample that it says will assist it to produce a believable maiden resource … and it may also put some money in the bank.

Everest says it might be able to mine Revere courtesy of a simple mobile “Gekko” mining plant that operates on gravity. While the 36,000-tonne bulk sample is being taken for exploratory reasons, any gold contained within it will likely be extracted and sold if the Gekko option checks out.

Importantly, Everest now has a handle on just how big the initial resource at Revere might be, with its newly-minted exploration target of between 2.5 and 4.1 million tonnes grading between 1 and 2.5 grams per tonne gold.

Management says the Revere quartz reef mineralised zones could host a potential resource of up to 334,000 ounces of gold. While more would usually be needed to justify a large-scale mine, that number – or any substantial part thereof – would represent an exquisite early-stage mining and cashflow opportunity if the ore proves to be amenable to gravity recovery and the small Gekko mobile plant could be used to mine it.

And if the previous bulk samples are anything to go by, the Revere ore recoveries already look impressive and potentially minable, just with gravity.

Samples collected from a shallow prospecting pit in the Revere reef system were made up of two different samples, one from the main quartz vein and one from the siltstone host rock. The quartz vein pulled grades as high as 305g/t gold, of which 47 per cent was in visible coarse gold. High recoveries of 97 per cent and 92.8 per cent to a primary gravity concentrate were achieved from both the quartz vein sample and the host rock siltstone sample.

The very high gold recoveries through a primary gravity concentrate at a coarse grind size for the gold bearing quartz vein is especially pleasing as this facilitates processing via a simple gravity circuit. The combination of such high-grade gold occurrences from surface, access to a processing plant and a near AUD 3,000 per ounce gold price places EMC in an excellent position as it works towards potential income generation from the Revere Project.

Historical drilling at Revere showed wild swings in grade between 0.1g/t gold and 28g/t – most likely a nod to the nuggetty effect of the reefs at the project. The bigger samples, however, showed off-the-scale numbers including 1195g/t gold from 80kg taken in 2007. Two other bulk samples of 258kg and 293kg were taken in 2018 and landed impressive grades of 18g/t and 357g/t gold.

Revere boasts highly-mineralised reefs that, importantly, start at surface and have so far been traced down to about 130m. While the at-surface nature of the gold at Revere and its potential for early-stage cashflows are a significant aspect of the project, Everest says it may also have other riches at depth where it is seeking a DeGrussa-style copper-gold lookalike.

Revere is well located along strike from the lucrative DeGrussa and Monty copper-gold mines, some 55km to the south-west. Deep holes drilled at the project earlier in the year show a geological system that has some similarities to that of DeGrussa, according to the company.

The operation is also awash with geophysical anomalies that point to something lurking at depth and Everest has launched a phase-two diamond drill campaign that will target off-hole conductors around the 300m mark that were identified in the earlier drilling.

Notably, portable XRF results from that prior drill campaign showed up to 5.7 per cent copper and up to 4.2 per cent zinc.

Unlike many other small cap exploration hopefuls, Everest at least looks to have a clear plan – get a handle on the tonnes and grade of gold near surface at Revere by bulk sampling, wrap a convincing maiden resource around it and then mine it quickly using a mobile Gekko plant that management says it already has its foot on.

The blue-sky part of that plan is to narrow down the multitude of geophysical targets at depth and then pierce their hearts with the drillbit in the hope that another DeGrussa might be hiding down there somewhere.

Success in either part of Everest’s grand plan at Revere will no doubt see the market train its eyeballs on the $17 million market-capped company. With only 129 million shares on issue, it might just be able to create a touch of excitement.

Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@wanews.com.au