Exploration Overview
Southern Cross Goldfields holds over 3,000km² of tenements in the prolific Southern Cross gold belt in Western Australia.
During the period 2008 to 2010, the Company explored for gold and nickel across all project areas and located additional gold resources at Battler and Dulcie. However in 2010, the Company completed a strategic review of its tenements, and embarked on a new exploration strategy aimed at defining medium-sized gold resources at numerous deposits with ore to be milled at a central processing facility.
The establishment of a central processing facility at Marda and the significant upside potential for incremental increases to the Company's production base significantly enhances the exploration potential of the Company's existing gold exploration prospects.
These deposits have the potential to underpin an initial production profile of 30,000oz pa over the first three years. The company has recently completed an intensive drilling program at seven deposits to underpin the feasability study and upgrade resources to measured where required.
There is excellent potential for significant high-grade extensions to the mineralisation at all of these deposits, as well as incremental additions to this production profile through exploration to test a number of advanced gold targets in the region.
These prospects include Andromeda and Blue Peter, where significant gold mineralisation has already been intersected. The Company will also undertake a detailed study of the old Evanston mine (historical production 60,000oz) to ascertain the potential for extensions to the deposit.
In addition, the Company's extensive tenement holdings of over 3,300km² in the region offer excellent potential for the discovery of significantly larger deposits in soil covered areas along strike from known gold mineralisation. An experienced consultant has been engaged to conduct a detailed review and targeting excercise over the Marda Gold Project. Part of that review will include target generation along the Evanston Shear Zone for greenfields gold targets.
The Company intends to undertake an aggressive exploration programme targeting 17km of the Evanston Shear Zone south of the Red Boomerang prospect, where porphyry-hosted mineralisation has been previously identified. This porphyry host demonstrates the potential for large mineralised systems along that trend by analogy with other porphyry-hosted systems in the Yilgarn Craton such as Kanowna Belle. To the north of Red Boomerang potential for significant gold mineralisation exists along 20km of prospective shear strike which has only been partially explored.
Accordingly, SXG has a three-pronged plan for future exploration:
- Increase the Resource/Reserve base at existing deposits - extensional and in-fill drilling
- Establish initial resource estimates for key exploration targets - such as Blue Peter and Andromeda
- Greenfields exploration program - targeting significant new discoveries
With each of these exploration strategies working in parallel, Southern Cross Goldfields is aiming to establish a large scale profitable gold mining operation which will deliver value for our shareholders well into the future.