Greatland
Gold plc (AIM: GGP)
E: info@greatlandgold.com
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NEWS RELEASE
| 25 April
2024
Ernest Giles grant of
Exploration Licence E38/3775
Secures access to a further 50km of highly
prospective underexplored strike extent
in the well endowed Eastern Goldfields
Greatland Gold plc (AIM:GGP) (Greatland or the Company) is pleased to announce that it
has been granted a new Exploration Licence E38/3775 (Mount Smith)
covering 555km2 at the Ernest Giles Project
(Ernest Giles).
Highlights
§ E38/3775 covers more than
50km of strike length of the highly prospective Ernest Giles
Yilgarn Craton Archean greenstone belt, with very limited previous
exploration
§ The existing land access
agreement covers the new tenement and allows on-ground activities
this year as part of Greatland's broader Ernest Giles Project
program
§ Geologically, the
complexity of the structure on the Mount Smith tenement combined
with favourable lithologies, makes it ideal for the formation of
structurally controlled orebodies as seen throughout the Eastern
Goldfields
Greatland Managing Director, Shaun Day,
commented:
"The granting of the Mount Smith tenement at our Ernest Giles
prospect more than doubles our exploration ground in the
underexplored and highly prospective Eastern Goldfields of Western
Australia.
"Ernest Giles has been a priority project for Greatland, and
especially so since agreeing land access last year. Accordingly, we
are delighted to increase the size and prospectivity of our ground
there which enhances our opportunity for a discovery at Ernest
Giles.
"We are busy working on an updated Ernest Giles exploration
program, incorporating geophysical surveys at Mount Smith. Our
intent is to commence a substantial drilling program
on the Meadows prospect at Ernest Giles in the second half of this
year."
Exploration Licence E38/3775 - Mount Smith
The newly granted Mount Smith
tenement is within the Manta Rirrtinya native title determination
and is covered by the land access agreement signed by Greatland
with the Manta Rirrtinya Native Title Holders in September
2023.
The grant of Mount Smith gives
renewed access(1) to a further ~50km of strike extent of
the Ernest Giles Archean greenstone belt and structures. This more
than doubles the previous accessible strike length.
Mount Smith has historically very limited on-ground exploration, with
only four reverse circulation (RC) holes drilled throughout the entire 555km2 area. Three of
these were logged as not reaching bedrock and therefore not testing
the target, while the depth of cover in the one effective hole was
logged as 369m. No significant bedrock mineralisation was
identified.
The highly magnetic interpreted
banded iron sediments (BIF - first order magnetic anomalies shown
in Figure 1) within
the Mount Smith tenement wrap into a crustal scale fault on the
eastern side of the tenement. This unit is also disrupted by a
large fault on the tenements western edge. Further disruption and
structural complexity displayed in the tenure including potential
isoclinal folding and/or thrust faulting has resulted in repetition
of the BIFs. Dilation zones and fluid pathways resulting from these
events are likely to be highly prospective for structurally
controlled gold systems as seen throughout the Eastern
Goldfields.
Figure
1: E38/3775 - Mount Smith
Geophysical Line interpretation on RTP aeromagnetic and underlying
greyscale 1VD
Figure 2: Ernest Giles regional Tenure on Satae 80m reduced to pole
(RTP) magnetics
Footnote (1): Greatland previously
held near continuous application and granted tenure over the area
covered by E38/3775 since 2008, with granted tenure held from 2009
to 2015 (E38/2204) and 2017 to 2020 (E38/3184). E38/2204 was
relinquished at the end of its initial term, while E38/3184 was
relinquished following the native title determination of Manta
Rirrtinya at the end of 2018.
Planned work at Ernest Giles
At Mount Smith the intended work
program for 2024 is to:
§ carry out
on-ground reconnaissance to confirm access and assess cover
depth;
§ improve
the geophysical interpretation focusing on identifying likely
dilational areas and fluid pathways; and
§ work with
a geophysical consultant to plan and carry out a geophysical survey
to best confirm these targets prior to drilling.
At Ernest Giles more broadly, a
ground based induced polarity (IP) electrical survey testing for
mineralisation related sulphide alteration and 5,000m of infill
drilling is planned targeting structural dilation zones and trap
sites in favourable lithologies at the Meadows prospect, commencing
in H2 2024.
Overview of the Ernest Giles Project
The Ernest Giles Project is located
approximately 250km north-east of the town of Laverton and covers a
folded belt of magnetic greenstone rocks typical of the highly gold
and nickel endowed Archean Eastern Goldfields of Western Australia
(Figure 2). The
Eastern Goldfields host some of Australia's large gold camps such
as Kalgoorlie, Leonora, Laverton, Mt Magnet and Jundee. The
prospective greenstone sequence at Ernest Giles does not outcrop
and, as a consequence, is underexplored relative to the remainder
of the Goldfields.
Within the Eastern Goldfields
the average spacing
of deposits with total endowment of +1Moz Au, or +100Kt Ni is
~26km(2). The strike length available to Greatland
to explore prior to this release was 40km of the total 130km
covered by Greatland leases and applications. With the grant of
Mount Smith this available strike length increases to
90km.
Figure 3: Ernest Giles Project location and Eastern Goldfields
significant Mines.
Footnote (2): The minimum nearest
neighbour distance of the mines displayed in Figure 2 was averaged.
The mines were filtered by endowment data taken from the S&P
dataset. The nearest neighbour calculation was confirmed by
creating a 5km spaced grid of points within the Eastern Goldfields
greenstones. The minimum distance of each of the grid points to a
mine fitting the criteria was then averaged. Both methods returned
~25km.
Prior to the discovery of Havieron
in 2018, Ernest Giles was Greatland's highest priority project. The
Company has previously completed 62 RC holes for ~17,000m and four
diamond holes for ~1,300m of diamond drilling.
The cover sequence in drilling
ranges from a depth of around 120m to more than 400m across the
broader project area. Moderate to deep RC and diamond drilling is
expected to provide an effective test of bedrock across most of the
tenure.
Prior work at Ernest Giles has
focused on the Meadows prospect on
E38/2205, with a program of 800m spaced RC
drilling. All holes intersected Archean bedrock inclusive of
prospective banded ironstones, mafic intrusives and dacites, all of
which are known gold host rocks within the Archean greenstones of
the Yilgarn Craton. Moderate gold results of up to 2g/t Au were
recorded, and these are considered highly encouraging given the
wide spaced nature of this first phase drill testing.
Two recently completed
diamond holes have confirmed the favourable stratigraphy and
mineralisation related alteration and provided critical structural
information to inform the next phase of targeted RC at
Meadows.
Contact
For further information, please
contact:
Greatland Gold plc
Shaun Day, Managing Director
| info@greatlandgold.com
Nominated Advisor
SPARK Advisory Partners
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About Greatland
Greatland is a mining development
and exploration company focused primarily on precious and base
metals.
The Company's flagship asset is the
world-class Havieron gold-copper project in the Paterson
Province of Western Australia, discovered by Greatland and
presently under development in joint venture with world gold
major, Newmont Corporation.
Havieron is located approximately
45km east of Newmont's existing Telfer gold mine. The box cut and
decline to the Havieron orebody commenced in February 2021.
Total development now exceeds 3,060m including over 2,110m of
advance in the main access decline (as at 31 December
2023). Subject to a positive feasibility study and Decision
to Mine, Havieron is intended to leverage the existing Telfer
infrastructure and processing plant. Access to Telfer would
de-risk the development and reduces capital expenditure.
Greatland has a proven track record
of discovery and exploration success and is pursuing the next
generation of tier-one mineral deposits by applying advanced
exploration techniques in under-explored regions. Greatland has a
number of exploration projects across Western Australia and in
parallel to the development of Havieron is focused on becoming a
multi-commodity miner of significant scale.
Competent Persons Statement
Information in this announcement pertaining to
Reporting of Exploration Results has been reviewed and approved by
Mr Damien Stephens, a Member of the AusIMM, who has more than 30
years relevant industry experience. Mr Stephens is a
full-time employee of the Company and has a financial interest in
Greatland. Mr Stephens has sufficient experience relevant to
the style of mineralisation and type of deposit under
consideration, and to the activity which he is undertaking to
qualify as a Competent Person as defined by the 2012 Edition of the
Australasian Code for Reporting of Exploration Results, Mineral
Resources and Ore Reserves (the JORC Code) and under the AIM Rules
- Note for Mining and Oil and Gas Companies, which outline
standards of disclosure for mineral projects. Mr Stephens
consents to the inclusion in this announcement of the matters based
on this information in the form and context in which it
appears. Mr Stephens confirms that the Company is not aware
of any new information or data that materially affects the
information included in the historical market announcements, and
that the form and context in which the information has been
presented has not been materially modified.