A substantially expanded (and growing) integrated geological database has materially improved exploration targeting and defined several priority targets with the potential to host significant gold mineralisation at Woodlark.

“The recently completed review shows there is significant scope to grow the 1.56Moz gold resource at Woodlark,” Geopacific CEO James Fox said.

“An increased metal inventory will drive a host of economic benefits for the project, including potential for increased cashflow, stronger financial returns, and extended mine-life.

“Importantly, numerous high-grade gold intercepts already exist across four priority target areas that have been identified through assessment of the integrated geological database.”

Each area hosts several prospects, all with existing high-grade drill hits, including 18m at 4.40 grams per tonne (g/t) gold from 22m at Great Northern, 26m at 1.92g/t from 24m at Boscalo, 11m at 3.04g/t from 49m at Talpos, 5m at 16.69g/t from 14m west of Wayai Creek, and 21m at 3.47g/t from 102m at Little McKenzie.

All are outside the current resource, and the known mineralisation in each remains open and largely untested.

Geopacific has also identified a large-scale untested mineralised corridor immediately north of the main Kulumadau West high-grade zone, which provides upside to extend near-surface resources.

This new target extends for 1km of strike and is around 100m wide. It has a similar footprint to Kulumadau West, which hosts 1.78 million tonnes at 4.9g/t for 279,600 oz of contained gold.

The Woodlark project spans 529km2 of the highly prospective Woodlark Island, and Geopacific is the only explorer/miner in the region, making it a dominant force.

PNG hosts a significant regional gold endowment and is home to several world-class projects including Tolu Minerals’ (ASX:TOK) 2Moz Tolukuma mine and Barrick Gold’s 26Moz Porgera mine.

According to Geopacific, there is north of $250m in value still to be realised at the Woodlark project.

The style of gold mineralisation at Woodlark is commonly associated with large-scale porphyry copper-gold deposits.

Porphyry deposits provide 60-70% of global copper supply and range from 100 million to several billion tonnes, ranking them among the largest ore deposits on earth.

Over the next six months, Geopacific will undertake field mapping programs across the four priority areas to validate existing data and support further testing through trenching and drilling.

“The team has been working hard on capturing new, and digitising historic data, to build out the exploration vectors to support the targeting process,” Fox said.

“On-ground assessment and mapping will continue prior to trenching and drill-testing. We look forward to discovering new, and extending the known near-surface gold mineralisation.”