Doray finds new gold at Gnaweeda

PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Western Australian gold miner Doray Minerals has announced a new gold discovery at the St Anne’s prospect, at its Gnaweeda project.

The ASX-listed company noted that first pass reverse circulation drilling over the St Anne's prospect had returned strong gold mineralisation, with 20 m at 2.4 g/t gold, including 8 m at 5 g/t gold.

MD Leigh Junk told shareholders that the discovery at St Anne’s highlighted the prospectivity of the Gnaweeda greenstone belt, and the ability to substantially grow the project’s gold endowment.

“St Anne’s has the potential to add to the 322 000 oz resource we have at Turnberry, which is the basis of the current mining feasibility study,” Junk said.

Meanwhile, Doray on Tuesday also reported that its Andy Well operation was expected to deliver more gold than initially planned, as it transitions to care and maintenance by early November.

The operation had initially been tipped to produce some 11 500 oz of gold in its last four months of operation, between July and October. However, due to higher grades and throughput from the final stopes process, this forecast has now been increased to between 13 000 oz and 14 000 oz.

At the Deflector mine, Doray has maintained its full year production expectations of between 60 000 oz and 65 000 oz for the year ending June, despite production between July and August this year being slightly lower than expected.

However, Doray has warned of higher all-in sustaining costs at Deflector for the September quarter, as the Deflector mine continued in its development-intensive initial year.

By early 2018, the ore drive at Deflector was expected to be within 50 m of the recently discovered Da Vinci bonanza-grade discovery, and if ongoing drilling and mine planning was successful in defining an area of economic production, mining at Da Vinci could start in this financial year.