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Kalamazoo bolsters Victorian gold ground with new deal

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Matt BirneySponsored
Kalamazoo Resources’ newly acquired Mt Piper gold project in Victoria.
Camera IconKalamazoo Resources’ newly acquired Mt Piper gold project in Victoria. Credit: File

Gold explorer Kalamazoo Resources believes it now has the largest exploration holding in the southern region of the central Victorian Goldfields after picking up the Mt Piper gold project from ASX-listed Coda Minerals.

According to Kalamazoo, the ground is highly underexplored, requires limited deep drilling and is in earshot of two promising precious metal operations — Mandalay Resources’ high-grade Costerfield gold mine and Southern Cross Gold’s Sunday Creek project.

The company says the 1609 square kilometre acquisition is consistent with its strategy of picking up assets with substantial exploration and development upside in Victoria .

As part of the deal, Kalamazoo has forked out $300,000 in cash, 1,525,000 fully paid ordinary shares and granted Coda a 1 per cent net smelter royalty on any minerals wrung out of its newly acquired package.

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Kalamazoo’s latest deal has increased its Victorian ground holding to 2094 square kilometres. Its portfolio now includes the fully owned Castlemaine, South Muckleford, Myrtle and Tarnagulla gold projects — all being subject to ongoing exploration programs.

Importantly, the company says the agreement with Coda allows it to funnel capital directly into the project, following a similar modus operandi it used effectively to acquire its flagship 5.6-million-ounce Castlemaine gold project in Victoria about 4 years ago.

The next step for Kalamazoo is kicking off a community engagement process before launching initial low-impact exploration at Mt Piper.

High-grade gold production in the area is largely driven by Agnico Eagle’s 9-million-ounce Fosterville gold mine. The asset has been coined the world’s highest-grade gold mine, with an average grade of about 12 grams per tonne inclusive of a 2.7-million-ounce reserve running almost an ounce to a tonne gold.

The region has seen a flurry of recent exploration success, with drilling at Southern Cross Gold’s nearby Sunday Creek project yielding a suite of solid intersections including a mammoth 119.2m strike going 3.2 g/t gold and 0.4 per cent antimony for 3.9 g/t gold equivalent.

Despite the recent regional highs, Kalamazoo says the tenements that form Mt Piper have seen only a dash of exploration, with most of the work at the project so far centred around reverse circulation drilling under 100m deep.

Last year, the ground’s former explorers, Torrens Mining — that Coda later acquired and inherited Mt Piper from — unveiled 31 gold prospects at the site.

Assay results from rock chips bagged at one of the prospects delivered a pair of results that gave cause for pause: 31.1 g/t and 30.4 g/t gold. Intriguingly, the prospect nicknamed “Goldie” houses a sequence of historical shallow mine workings across a 1.2km strike length and was targeted because of promising soil assay results going 1800 parts per billion gold.

Kalamazoo says it now plans to follow up the work already completed by Torrens at Mt Piper and turn the already-defined prospects into drill-ready targets.

Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@wanews.com.au

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