Gold Road Resources continues to increase its footprint in Western Australia after reporting a 70 per cent increase in its Yamarna mineral resource.
As part of the 0.21-million-ounce boost, there’s been extensions to the Gilmour and Renegade deposits, as well as maiden mineral resources for the Smokebush and Warbler prospects within the Yamarna project.
Yamarna’s mineral resource is now 6.4 million tonnes at 2.44 grams per tonne (g/t) of gold for 0.51 million ounces, increasing Gold Road’s total attributable mineral resource to 102.8 million tonnes at 1.43 g/t for 4.73 million ounces.
This also includes Gold Road’s flagship Gruyere gold joint venture (JV) mine, which the company owns in a 50:50 joint venture (JV) with Gold Fields and is located adjacent to Yamarna project.
Gold Road also reported encouraging results from reverse circulation (RC) drilling at Yamarna’s Abydos, Earl and Waffler prospects, with Abydos intercepting 3.63 g/t of gold mineralisation across two metres from the YMRC00177A drill hole.
As part of a $30-million 2022 exploration budget, Gold Road has 160,000 metres of drilling planned for the year, which will be primarily focussed on Yamarna’s southern project area including the Gilmour, Smokebush and Warbler deposits.
It comes as the Gruyere project produced a record amount of ore during the December quarter of 2021.
The Tier 1 gold operation mined 3.2 million tonnes (Mt) of ore, an increase of 0.6 Mt from the previous quarter, according to the company’s December quarterly report.
The quarterly throughput was also at record highs at an annualised rate of 8.9 Mt per annum as the process plant utilisation lifted significantly during the quarter.
Gruyere produced 67,813 ounces of gold at an all-in sustaining cost (AISC) of $1526 per attributable ounce during the December 2021 quarter, compared to the September quarter which saw 59,371 ounces produced at an AISC of $1697.
The quarter-on-quarter improvement was largely the result of increased plant availability supporting record quarterly processing throughput and improving head grades.