Gold Fields ups hunt for new gold feed... Interesting !!Monday, 4 February 2019 6:53PM The hunt for more gold to feed the rich St Ives gold mine near Kambalda is ramping up as the mine’s South African owner, Gold Fields, starts drilling on a joint venture to the east of the 350,000oz a year operation.
Gold Fields has started a four-month aircore drilling campaign on Lake Lefroy as part of a $25 million, six-year farm-in and joint venture with ASX-listed junior Lefroy Exploration.
The Western Lefroy joint venture covers about 372sqkm alongside the St Ives gold camp, where Gold Fields is looking for new sources of production to supplement its core multimillion-ounce Invincible mine.
Lefroy Exploration managing director Wade Johnson, a former Newmont rock-kicker, said he was happy to hand the lake-based exploration program over to a company with deeper pockets and experience in the field.
“We’ve started doing that drilling back in 2017, so we can do it, but I guess they’ve got all that capacity behind them,” he said.
“They’ve got the experience and knowledge of making those discoveries like Invincible.
“They’ve been mining Invincible and they know how to explore on the lake.
“For a junior company to do it ... it means we’d have to raise a huge amount of money to go do that exploration.”
Mr Johnson noted the joint venture had also enabled the junior to focus its energy and funds on the eastern portion of its Lefroy gold project, where drilling is ongoing at the Lucky Strike prospect ahead of a maiden resource estimate later this year.
https://www.kalminer.com.au/?news/kalgoorlie-miner/gold-fields-ups-hunt-for-new-gold-feed-ng-b881093634z