Pacgold nails five hits from five holes in new Qld gold target

Pacgold’s Alice River gold project in north Queensland has served up another golden surprise, with all five holes from a first-pass aircore drilling program at its new Kapok prospect revealing broad gold zones over a 50-metre-wide corridor.

Kapok is a previously untested quartz-vein and outcropping target that sits at the northernmost point of the Alice River Fault Zone within the company’s grounds. It also lies just six kilometres north of Pacgold’s flagship Central Target mining lease, which hosts the bulk of its existing 854,000 ounce gold resource grading 1.01 grams per tonne (g/t).

The drill bit hit paydirt in every hole, revealing consistent near-surface gold and a string of sheeted quartz veins hinting at a continuous mineralised system below.

The standout aircore hits featured 15 metres grading 0.38 grams per tonne (g/t) gold from surface, including a 4-metre interval at 0.70g/t from 4 metres. A second hole intercepted a 6 metre section going 0.35g/t gold withing a broader 16-metre strike running at 0.23g/t gold from surface.

Other holes cut 15 metres at 0.25g/t gold and 13 metres at 0.11g/t gold, both from surface and all within a shallow envelope of mineralisation reaching just 19 metres deep.

Whilst the grades are modest, they are often to be expected, given aircore drilling is typically just a glorified soil sample designed to provide hints of richer grades that may be lurking below.

Pacgold says the presence of gold in every hole - which were drilled vertically - combined with visible quartz veining and a mapped footwall fault, confirms Kapok as a significant new structural target along the north-south Alice River trend.

The company says the area is now a priority for follow-up reverse-circulation drilling once field access reopens after the North Queensland wet season in April next year.

The delineation of wide zones of continuous mineralisation at Kapok in the first pass aircore programme is really exciting and continues to strengthen our understanding of the system and add confidence to what we believe has the potential a major gold discovery at Alice River.

While Kapok stole the spotlight, Pacgold also pulled in encouraging numbers from its Victoria target, a hidden gem lying under shallow sandstone and sand cover just two kilometres southeast of the company’s Southern Target, which is laced with historic workings.

Victoria sits on a five-kilometre stretch of the Alice River trend and forms part of the same gold-bearing corridor that has already produced a string of strong hits nearby.

An aircore blitz in 2024 lit up with a series of coincident gold, arsenic and antimony anomalies running the length of the target area.

To chase up those sniffs, the rigs were brought back two months ago to run a 20-hole reverse-circulation program across 2.4 kilometres of priority strike to see just how deep the system goes.

The drill bit punched through the cover to reveal low-grade but continuous gold mineralisation in basement-hosted quartz veins - an early sign of a potentially much broader system lurking beneath.

Management says the results clearly justify a bigger push in 2026, with infill and step-out drilling on the cards to follow the mineralisation at depth and along strike.

The broader Alice River project spans 377 square kilometres in the gold-rich north Queensland mineral province, which is home to multi-million-ounce neighbours such as the Ravenswood, Pajingo and Mt Leyshon operations.

As the wet season fast approaches, Pacgold is preparing to bring its 2025 exploration campaign to a close. The impressive program has drilled 118 reverse-circulation holes for 12,586 metres and 434 aircore holes for 4,608 metres.

In particular, the company took the opportunity to test out a high-impact target at the southern end of its leases called White Lion, which has the potential to be a showstopper.

The prospect ticks every box of a classic Mount Leyshon-style pressure pipe - one of Queensland’s most legendary gold systems – and yet has somehow flown completely under the radar. That is until Pacgold’s geophysics lit up a deep induced polarisation (IP) anomaly peaking at 38 millivolts against a more dormant 8 millivolt backdrop - the kind of signature that makes geologists sit bolt upright.

The 800m by 500m target, sitting 50m to 250 m below surface, lights up across chargeability, resistivity and magnetics – a rare triple-play in exploration circles. Ten holes have now been drilled across a one-kilometre zone, with all eyes laser focused on the outcome of assay results expected shortly.

Elsewhere and in a departure from its Queensland exploration efforts, Pacgold revealed last month it has grabbed the keys to the historic White Dam heap leach gold operation in South Australia. The low-cost trade - worth up to $3.3 million in cash and 15 million Pacgold shares -paves the way for near-term production and cash flow.

Just 80 kilometres southwest of Broken Hill, Pacgold’s newly acquired mine is no stranger to gold. Between 2010 and 2018, the fully operational heap leach operation pumped out about 180,000 ounces – and it still has plenty left to give.

The deal hands Pacgold the whole package including the processing plant, camp, leach pads and supporting infrastructure, all of which are in solid working order and ready to roll. It also comes with a tidy 4.6-million-tonne JORC resource at 0.7g/t for 102,000 ounces of gold.

However, the real sweetener lies in the gold already sitting in the leach pads. Pacgold plans to re-crush and retreat that material to kickstart production and cashflow as early as February next year.

With heritage surveys ticked off and the rigs set to roll back in next field season, Pacgold is primed to hit the ground running across multiple fronts.

The company’s work has now mapped a continuous 15-kilometre stretch of gold-arsenic-antimony anomalism along the Alice River Fault Zone - a geochemical highway packed with potential and plenty of room to grow its resource base through systematic drilling.

If Kapok’s early promise holds up, it could soon join its other prosects at Posie, Shadows and Central as another key piece in what could become one of Queensland’s most compelling emerging gold systems.

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