Drilling blitz to unlock Brightstar 1.5M-ounce WA Sandstone gold hub
A colossal 80,000-metre drilling blitz at Brightstar Resources' Sandstone gold project has the company steaming towards the development of a new 1.5-million-ounce Western Australian gold hub at the long-dormant project.
Hot on the heels of its 2024 acquisitions of Alto Metals and the Montague East gold project from Gateway Mining, Brightstar is firming up its drilling and feasibility studies to unlock Sandstone's untapped potential.
Brightstar's fully funded exploration juggernaut is set to unlock deeper and potentially highly profitable ounces across the consolidated project, as it eyes a 2.5–3.5 million tonne per annum processing plant option. The company aims to unlock a region unmined for more than 15 years.
The company says it has already drilled 23,500m of a broader 134,000m program planned for this year. It has assays pending from high-grade prospects outside of the town of Sandstone, including Lord Nelson, Bull Oak, Havilah and the Indomitable Camp.
Early results are lighting up high-grade underground resources, with intercepts returning hits of 3m at 26.3 grams per tonne (g/t) gold and 4m at 59.0g/t. The intercepts hint at never-tested high-grade resources at depth across the project, which could upgrade its economic viability considerably.
Brightstar says its prefeasibility study, slated for early next year, is focussed primarily on the existing resources across Sandstone. The resources were chased within the top 150m from surface during times of weaker gold prices that overlooked the region's depth potential.
With gold prices soaring at about $5150 per ounce – more than 10 times the $500 per ounce price seen for most of Sandstone's operational era -Brightstar believes it is poised to capitalise on a major production opportunity in one of WA's underdeveloped gold-bearing greenstone belts.
Brightstar's exploration team is leaving no stone unturned, with two-thirds of its portfolio-wide 134,000m drilling budget earmarked to expand Sandstone's 33Mt resource, which grades a respectable 1.5g/t gold for 1.5M ounces.
Drilling will also focus on greenfield discovery targets across the project, including Hacks West, Bulchina South, Sandstone North and recently uncovered Duplex prospects, which the company says are primed for follow-up testing.
Sandstone's historical exploration was a mere teaser, with past owners such as Herald and Troy pulling more than 600,000 ounces from shallow oxide material at a puny 600ktpa plant.
Brightstar's bold vision dwarfs that scale, leveraging sealed highways and low-cost ore haulage from Montague, 70 kilometres away, at less than 0.1g/t gold-equivalent to feed a modern 3Mtpa mill near Sandstone town to spit out some 130,000 ounces annually.
At the end of the March quarter, the company was sitting pretty with $7M cash in the kitty, not including proceeds from the 100 kilograms of gold it produced through an ore purchase agreement with Genesis Minerals in March. It is also finalising a US$11.5M (A$18M) debt facility with United States-based Ocean Partners, which will be used to fast-track the company's aggressive growth agenda.
With Sandstone's 1.5M-ounce resource just scratching near surface, Brightstar believes its aggressive drilling campaign is poised to unlock deeper, high-grade lodes at the long-overlooked Sandstone-Gum Creek greenstone belts. This region is now in the spotlight, thanks to Brightstar, as a prime target for potential major-scale production.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact:
matt.birney@wanews.com.au
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