Australian contract mining and drilling services group Perenti has won a 10-month contract to build an exploration drill drive at Spartan Resources’ Dalgaranga gold project in Western Australia.
Spartan is drilling aggressively at the site, 65km north-west of Mt Magnet in the state’s Murchison region, on the back of its exciting high-grade Never Never gold discovery in mid-2022 and subsequent resource statements. They include the latest indicated and inferred 5.72 million tonnes grading 8.07 grams per tonne (1.485 million ounces) announced this week.
Spartan is the former Gascoyne Resources that went into administration in 2019 under crippling debt as it struggled to make low-grade surface mining work at Dalgaranga. A soaring gold price shifted the operating outlook and Gascoyne completed a capital restructure and name change last year.
As well as the impressive Never Never Spartan has uncovered Pepper (1.78Mt grading 7.66gpt gold for 438,100oz) and other high-grade finds.
“The Spartan team has taken the pieces of a struggling low-grade openpit gold miner and rebuilt it as a highly successful high-grade exploration, discovery and development machine,” Spartan CEO Simon Lawson said this week.
He said the latest Never Never resource would underpin a maiden underground ore reserve due for delivery in the second half of 2024.
Given the new high-grade Pepper discovery was “in such close-proximity to the development associated with any Never Never underground access scenario”, it was the Spartan drill team’s priority in-fill and extensional drill target in the second half of 2024.
Perenti unit Barminco is doing the Dalgaranga drill drive.
“The drive has been designed to run in parallel and adjacent to the mineralised gold zones of Never Never, Pepper, Four Pillars and West Winds, to facilitate underground exploration and subsequently support future production plans,” Perenti said.
The company has also picked up contract extensions with Endeavour Mining at the Mana gold mine in Burkina Faso, and at the Spotted Quoll nickel mine for IGO and Mt Colin copper mine for Aeris Resources in Australia.
The new work was expected to contribute about A$160 million of revenue to Perenti’s FY25 total.
“The greenfield underground at Dalgaranga project is an exciting opportunity,” Perenti CEO Mark Norwell said.
“The resource has the potential to grow into a high-grade gold mine and we look forward to supporting Spartan Resources to achieve their targets during the months ahead.”
