The company has allocated the lion’s share – 32,000m – to resource expansion and infill drilling at the Central and Northern zones of the KGP.

Drilling at these deposits will focus on growing the resource and increasing confidence in early mining areas to ore reserve conversions.

The company acquired 860ha of freehold land directly around the KGP in August and the drilling will investigate opportunities to extend open pits and underground operations into the newly accessible land.

Ausgold (ASX:AUC) executive chair John Dorward said the upcoming drilling program was one of the most significant the company had undertaken to date.

“Following the recently settled land access arrangement, we are combining low-risk, high-reward resource growth at the KGP with an aggressive regional campaign that aims to unlock the significant discovery upside of our project,” he said.

“Importantly, the infill drilling will add further resilience to the Katanning gold project as we advance rapidly towards a final investment decision this financial year.”

About 90% of the KGP’s 2.44Moz gold resource sits within the Central Zone, which contains the Jinkas-White Dam synformal structure.

Ausgold is keen to test down-plunge of known ore shoots at the Jinkas trend for high-grade gold, freshly available for exploration now that it’s included in the Katanning tenure.

Ausgold is also building out its regional pipeline of gold prospects, with plans to produce a maiden resource estimate for the Nanicup Bridge-Zinger prospect.

The company has devoted 12,000m of the upcoming drilling program to this purpose, while also investigating the Kraken and Moulyinning prospects along key regional trends.

Specifically, AUC is interested in a gold-in-soil anomaly extending over most of the Stanley Thrust, a 100km-long fault about 25km east of the KGP, host to the Nanicup Bridge-Zinger deposit in the south.

Part of the drilling campaign is designed to produce sufficient data for a maiden resource estimate for Nanicup Bridge-Zinger.

The company will also mobilise drill rigs to investigate the Yandina Thrust, 75km to the east and north of the KGP and host to the Griffins Find gold mine and the Tampia gold mine, as well as Ausgold’s Kulin gold project in the north, which has been incorporated into the KGP as the Kraken prospect.