Lunnon (ASX:LM8) adds to St Ives Foster gold legacy in Goldfields

Lunnon Metals’ first-pass gold target testing has returned precious metal success at Foster-Baker as it prepares a prefeasibility study for its greater Kambalda Nickel Project near the namesake town in Western Australia’s Eastern Goldfields.

Results of 6 metres at 3.03 grams per tonne, 2m @ 24.49g/t Au, and 3m @ 4.78g/t Au came from kindred host rocks and structural settings to the nearby deposits that gave the Goldfields its name.

And the project sits about 70 kilometres from Kalgoorlie-Boulder, wedged between two eminent regional operations, the 3.7-million-ounce Victory-Defiance and similarly sized Argo-Hamlet-Athena.

Lunnon Managing Director Edmund Ainscough said holding a portfolio of tenements in two of St Ives’ great gold mining areas was a standout opportunity.

“The start of 2024 has been the perfect time to test a suite of high-ranking early-stage targets and advance our understanding of the potential for gold in this area, having reached a natural pause in our surface nickel program whilst we await results from the PFS for Foster and Baker,” he said.

The company took Baker from a nickel discovery to an ore reserves in less than 18 months, drawing on expertise in its on-site and technical teams which Ainscough flagged had a track record in swiftly capitalising on opportunities.

“As with our nickel mineral resources, the gold prospects in the Foster area are all hosted on granted mining leases, and with a nearby gold plant owned by our major shareholder which has potential spare capacity, the Lunnon Metals team will seek to pursue these exciting gold prospects as quickly, but just as diligently, as they did Baker,” he said.

The Foster-Baker deposits are housed in the 47 square kilometre Kambalda Nickel Project about 1km from the historic Foster nickel mine, which is also part of the project area.

About 60,000 tonnes of nickel metal was pulled out of Foster by Western Mining Corporation between 1981-82 and 1994, providing about 30 per cent of the feed to WMC’s Kambalda Concentrator during its peak.

Lunnon’s Foster-Baker deposits area has obviously been explored for gold before, but extensive geological surveys have allowed the company to complete a detailed analysis of the framework which plays host to both nickel and gold mineralisation.

“The company is targeting gold prospects on its tenements at Foster-Baker area that can potentially deliver near-surface gold mineralisation that may be amenable to open pit mining in the short to medium term whilst the size and scale of any discovery is more fully investigated, particularly at depth,” the company reported today.

Lunnon’s encouraging results from its first-pass drilling help highlight the opportunity for open pit mining at the project, with drilling going into a “natural hiatus”.

The company sees extensional drilling underground as appropriate action to execute once Foster and Baker are in production.

A historic connection

Lunnon Metals experienced management team has more than 40 years combined gold exploration and production experience at St Ives gold mine.

Lunnon Metals Managing Director Edmund Ainscough and founding shareholder Darren Hedley in early 2002, who were then Chief Geologist and Mining Manager at St Ives Gold, just after Gold Fields snapped up the operation

Gold was first produced at the Kambalda-St Ives gold camp in 1896 with the discovery of Red Hill gold mine, which is adjacent to the Lunnon’s historical Silver Lake nickel mine at Kambalda.

Gold was mined at Foster-Baker area from the 1920s but came to its own in the 1980s when WMC began producing gold at the Victory-Defiance Complex, and Hunt nickel mine near Kambalda.

WMC sold St Ives Gold Mine to Gold Fields in December 2001 after producing 5.6 million ounces of gold.

Gold Fields went on to produce 9.6Moz of gold itself and found the Invincible gold deposit, which Lunnon sees as an encouraging sign that the biggest deposits are not always found at the start of the gold discovery cycle.

Foster-Baker project area showing Lunnon’s gold targets as blue callouts, showing the maximum gold-in-hole anomalism in drilling over an air photo depicting key local infrastructure and past production in adjacent mining areas on Gold Fields’ leases

Upcoming milestones

Lunnon is awaiting results from first-pass gold exploration drilling at the Thelma, Lady Herial and Hustlers prospects and results from diamond drilling and reverse circulation drilling at Paringa West.

The company plans to compare these results with those from the remainder of the gold portfolio to advance the highest priority opportunities as swiftly as possible.

Over at its Silver Lake-Fisher project (SLF), Lunnon is waiting on results, analysis and interpretation from a 2023 3D seismic survey at Long South Gap while working towards undertaking causeway construction using waste rock from one of the neighbouring mining operations to minimise haulage time and costs.

A mineral resource update for Foster South is due soon, to be followed by an initial estimate for the 40, 50 and 60 surfaces at Foster mine.

Both these exercises had been deferred after the company’s staff pivoted its focus towards recent gold exploration efforts and a review of budget spending, in light of negative nickel market sentiment.

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