Brightstar mulls both open pit and underground mining at Menzies

Brightstar’s inaugural exploration at the Aspacia and Link Zone prospects has the miner mulling over both open pit and underground mining scenarios at its Menzies gold project.

Results from the remaining 18 holes of an RC drill program show numerous high-grade hits at Aspacia and the shallow eight-hole Lady Shenton-Lady Harriet “Link Zone” regions.

At Aspacia, notable hits include:

• 1m @ 16.16g/t Au, within 4m @ 4.79g/t Au from 112m (MGPRC025)
• 1m @ 6.13g/t Au from 89m (MGPRC026)
• 4m @ 2.45g/t Au from 96m including 1m @ 6.85g/t Au (MGPRC025)
• 3m @ 2.92g/t Au from 29m including 1m @ 6.44g/t Au (MGPRC018)
• 2m @ 4.16g/t Au from 35m (MGPRC017)

While Link Zone showed:

• 1m @ 13.95g/t Au from 45m (MGPRC036)
• 4m @ 3.21 g/t Au from 40m (MGPRC034)
• 3m @ 4.29g/t Au from 45m (MGPRC037)
• 4m @ 1.99 g/t Au from 54m (MGPRC038)

Brightstar Resources (ASX:BTR) says assays from Aspacia confirm >500m of strike extent of the high-grade historically mined underground mine is open both at depth and along strike, with 18 or 19 holes total hitting >2g/t Au mineralisation and “typical of underground resource cut-off grades”.

At Link Zone, the company is mulling a potential open-pit scenario – as all eight holes hit mineralisation and results indicate consistent shallow mineralisation.

Brightstar MD Alex Rovira says the team is pleased to receive the final assays from Menzies as they tested and confirmed an understanding of certain mineralised systems at the project – with both Aspacia and Link Zone representing two compelling areas for further testing.

“The Link Zone” [is] presenting a great opportunity to explore for shallow oxide material which would be ideal for open-pit mining scenarios,” Rovira said.

“While drilling results at Aspacia have confirmed our geological model and pleasingly increased the known strike and depth extends beyond the historic high-grade underground workings which were historically mined at +30g/t Au.

“It is encouraging to see the consistency of the gold-bearing structures and intercepts where they were modelled to be economic, especially given the drilling was extensional drilling testing conceptual locations of lode positions at depth and along strike.

“The presence of multiple lodes in close proximity to each other and the high grades provide a compelling reason to continue to drill Aspacia and advance towards a potential delineation of a high-grade MRE.”

Future plans

The miner says that armed with an increased understanding of the geology at Menzies, the team is now preparing for another round of RC drilling at both Aspacia and Link Zone this quarter to potentially delineate MREs at both locations.

It’s also thinking about diamond drilling during Q4 based on the release of a scoping study due by the end of the month.

While that’s all going on, Brightstar will keep up the exploration momentum along Menzies’ northern trend targeting gold mineralisation along the ~7km-long Menzies Shear Zone between Lady Irene and Selkirk, as well as greenfields exploration at its recently acquired tenements from Ardea Resources (ASX:ARL).

Assays are still pending from a ~2,000m RC campaign at Cork Tree Well prospect at the Laverton gold project.

This article was developed in collaboration with Brightstar Resources, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.

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