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Heritage begins underground drilling programme at Karangahake
7 December 2004 - Heritage Gold NZ Ltd says results from exploration of the Dominion Knoll area of its Talisman gold prospect at Karangahake in the southern Coromandel, suggest the scale of the targets could be significantly increased.
Heritage says that four major quartz veins had been identified containing anomalous gold geochemistry within 4 broad north trending mineralised zones.
The Dominion Knoll results come as Heritage begins a 23-25 hole underground diamond drilling programme mainly into the Maria vein of the Talisman mine section of its Karangahake project. The core drilling programme is part of Heritage’s second phase of resource evaluation which aims by January 2005 to double the existing resource base.
The development at Talisman, about 15 km west of Waihi, has so far established a resource of 109,600 oz of gold and 438,000 oz of silver. A scoping study for Heritage has suggested around 50,000 oz of gold a year could be mined from late 2006.
Dominion Knoll is the southernmost of three contiguous exploration permits covering the Karangahake epithermal system, where a gold resource has been established at Talisman (adjacent to Dominion Knoll), and promising exploration drilling results reported at Rahu (the northernmost permit).
Heritage says the Dominion Knoll exploration is most encouraging as these mineralised zones show distinct magnetic signatures and coincident resistivity anomalies which, based on experience, are likely to reflect quartz veins at depth.
The Dominion Knoll results support the likely extension of the Maria vein system south from the Talisman mine, significantly increasing the scale of the exploration targets in the Karangahake project.
Heritage says it has also now appointed URS New Zealand Ltd as its environmental consultants to acquire and manage the data required for baseline environmental studies at Karangahake, which is about 15km west of Waihi.
