The company, which is the resurrected Gascoyne Resources, told the ASX on Wednesday it had found visible gold 170m below the 952,000-ounce Never Never deposit.
Spartan said the 20.5m of “typical” Never Never-style mineralisation was logged from 871.5m down-hole, including small specs of visible gold logged at 878.7m down-hole.
Other significant new Never Never assay results included 25.17m at 6.59g/t gold from 448.3m down-hole, including 7.5m at 13.52g/t.
Spartan managing director and chief executive Simon Lawson said the company’s 2024 strategy was simple: “Drill and de-risk.”
“Drilling at the key high-grade Never Never gold deposit is targeting more rapid high-grade resource growth by mid-2024, and with our first deep hole already hitting more than 20m of typical highly silicified and altered Never Never-style mineralisation at 878m down-hole, including specs of visible gold, I’d say we’re already well on the way towards achieving that objective,” he said.
“We are also drilling to de-risk Never Never by targeting conversion of more than 85 per cent of the current mineral resource estimate ounces to indicated classification.
“This drilling is designed to provide increased grade, volume and metal content confidence to the Spartan engineering team.
“Our drilling and de-risking includes ongoing metallurgical test work from drillholes designed and drilled specifically for this purpose.
“This drilling is yielding crucial information for our ongoing ore reserve and feasibility study work.
“A recent example is metallurgical drillhole DGRC1396, drilled inside the Never Never gold deposit MRE and potential open pit, which returned a spectacular gold assay of 170m at 4.13g/t from surface to the footwall contact.
“This result, while not useful in a resource estimation sense due to its sub-vertical drill angle, gives a useful insight into the down-plunge gold grade variability through any number of open-pit to underground design scenarios for the Never Never gold deposit.”
Spartan in December said Dalgaranga had a mineral resource of 21.15 million tonnes at 2.49g/t for 1.692 million ounces of gold.
The company said Dalgaranga comprised two deposits — Never Never had a resource of 5.16Mt at 5.74g/t for 952,900oz, while Gilbey’s Complex had 15.99Mt at 1.45g/t for 739,800oz.
Spartan had resumed trading on the ASX last March after a four-month voluntary suspension and $50 million recapitalisation.
Dalgaranga was put into care and maintenance in November 2022, which Mr Lawson at the time attributed to the continued pressure of industry-wide cost inflation, approval delays and sub-par operational performance.
The shuttering came just a little over two years after Gascoyne emerged from administration and returned to the ASX, 14 months after it collapsed with $100m debt.
