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The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Validates SE Extension of Korbel resource; Nova raises A$21M North of 60 Mining News – November 30, 2020
Tracked vehicles and a winter road offers Nova Minerals with a relatively low-cost means of transporting goods and supplies to support year-round drilling at Estelle, a gold-rich property about 100 miles northwest of Anchorage, Alaska.
As Americans were preparing for the most unusual Thanksgiving holiday in memory, Australia-based Nova Minerals Ltd. announced results from the "most important" hole drilled to date at Estelle and the raising of A$21 million (US$15.5 million) to fund the ongoing exploration of this rapidly expanding gold project about 100 miles (160 kilometers) northwest of Anchorage, Alaska's largest city.
Korbel, a growing gold resource area at the north end of the 85-square-mile (220 square kilometers) Estelle land package, currently hosts 291 million metric tons of Australian Joint Ore Reserves Committee- (JORC) compliant inferred resource averaging 0.4 grams per metric ton (3.3 million ounces) gold.
This resource is contained in two blocks – A and B – that drilling has since connected into a 1,350-meter-long contiguous deposit known as Korbel Main.
The latest batch of results includes a hole that further confirms Southeast Extension, indicating that Korbel Main extends for at least another 350 meters along strike.
Drilled toward the southeast from the edge of the current resource, hole KBDH-025 cut 586 meters averaging 0.3 g/t gold from a depth of seven meters. Nova is particularly excited that the grades increased as the hole clipped the extension zone at depth and to the southeast, with the bottom three meters of this hole averaging 1.2 g/t gold.
"This is the most important drill hole to date and confirms the substantial extension of the footprint to the southeast," said Nova Minerals CEO Christopher Gerteisen.
The company has further encountered Southeast Extension from several holes drilled in a fan from Pad 6, which provides a more advantageous angle for this Korbel expansion target. While assay results are pending from these holes, company geologists are encouraged by the mineralization they are seeing in the core.
"The rocks we are seeing from the Pad 6 drillhole's intersection within this southeast extension feeder zone are some of the most spectacular we have seen to date. It is very encouraging to see such strong and wide gold intersections extending beyond the current 3.3-million-oz resource block," said Gerteisen. "This further enhances the possibility of adding greatly to the resource inventory at Korbel Main at the time of the next resource upgrade in 2021."
In addition to expanding the resource within, below and to the southeast of Korbel Main, Nova's drilling is confirming gold mineralization to the west and along strike to the northwest. This includes the first holes drilled in blocks C and D, which are 100 to 1,000 meters west of Korbel Main, and Isabella, a zone about 350 meters northwest of the resource blocks.
One hole drilled at Isabella cut 303 meters averaging 0.4 g/t gold.
This provides Nova with a lot of targets for a drill program that is slated to carry on through the winter.
"Drilling continues non-stop with one diamond drill rig at Pad 6 testing the newly defined southeast extension of Korbel Main. A second rig is currently drilling from Pad 8 on Block D, which has produced core with similar impressive, sheeted quartz-arsenopyrite vein mineralization. The rigs are scheduled to drill test Block C and Isabella in due course," said Gerteisen. "We have a very active winter season ahead of us with exploration, economic analysis and ESG (environmental, social, and corporate governance) studies to be run concurrently. The Korbel deposit's mineralization remains wide-open in all directions and it is certainly something special to behold. It is full steam ahead for Nova as we continue to unlock this world-class resource."
To fund its resource building drill program, Nova raised A$21 million in a financing that closed on Nov. 24.
"This raising will allow us to keep our momentum as we unlock the full value of what we believe to be a district scale asset with immense scope for further inventory growth," said the Nova Minerals CEO. "We expect to add substantial tonnages within Korbel Main through the delivery of a global resource estimate for blocks A, B, C, and D in 2021 whilst maintaining a low cost per discovery ounce."
In the meantime, Nova is also completing ore sorting studies. Results from these studies aimed at upgrading mill feed grades by eliminating non-gold bearing material are expected to be included in a preliminary economic assessment and subsequent prefeasibility study for Korbel.
Over his more than 16 years of covering mining and mineral exploration, Shane has become renowned for his ability to report on the sector in a way that is technically sound enough to inform industry insiders while being easy to understand by a wider audience.
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