Ballard Mining’s Baldock gold resource has now achieved an indicated and inferred mineral resource increase to one million ounces, creating higher confidence in its flagship project.
Located within the company’s Mt Ida project in Western Australia, Baldock is said to have increased its resource by 76,000 ounces to nine million tonnes at 3.5 grams per tonne (g/t) of gold for one million ounces, with global resource at Mt Ida increasing to 12.3 million tonnes at 3 g/t for 1.2 million ounces of gold.
The increase follows an infill drilling program at the site that is said to have increased indicated resources by 66 per cent to 5.6 million tonnes at 3.7 g/t gold containing 669,000 ounces – up from just over 400,000 ounces.
Over the last six months, the drilling program was aimed at converting inferred resource to indicated resource to allow a maiden ore reserve to be estimated by mid-2026.
“Our top-down goal for the maiden ore reserve has always been 400-500,000 ounces, which represents a good conversion rate of the indicated material and provides a basis for this aspirational target,” Ballard Mining managing director Paul Brennan said in a statement.
“The company’s stated ambition has been to de-risk the first five to six years of a targeted mine life of at least eight years. We are confident that this Baldock mineral resource estimate update will achieve this objective.”
Ballard’s Mt Ida gold project is located 220 km northwest of Kalgoorlie in the Eastern Goldfields region of Western Australia, with gold mineralisation identified in numbers prospects throughout the project’s area.
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