TNM Drill Down: Great Boulder leads week's top gold assays with Side Well in Australia

Our TNM Drill Down features highlights of the top gold assays of the past week. Drill holes are ranked by gold grade x width, as identified by our sister company Mining Intelligence.

A project from Down Under topped two from the Americas in results for the Mar. 3-10 period. Great Boulder Resources (ASX: GBR) led the chart with an assay from its Side Well project in Australia followed by Torex Gold Resources (TSX: TXG) at its Media Luna project in Mexico and Luminex Resources (TSXV: LR) at Condor in Ecuador.

Great Boulder drill hole 23MBRC006A cut 1 metre grading 3,451 grams gold per tonne from 114 metres downhole for a grade x width of 3451 at the Side Well project in Western Australia. It's by far the highest gold assay at the project's Mulga Bill target and the first time coarse visible gold has been reported, the company said.

The same hole also returned 1 metre grading 2,374 grams gold from 158 metres depth. More results are due within weeks and Great Boulder says it's continuing to drill along the 6-km long Mulga Bill corridor.

"Results like this are extremely unusual at Mulga Bill," Great Boulder managing director Andrew Paterson said in a Mar. 7 filing to the Australia stock market. "We will need to do tight-spaced infill drilling around this area to quantify the extent and grade."

Side Well lies beside Westgold Resources' (ASX: WGX) Meekatharra gold operation, about 750 km northeast of Perth. Exploring at Side Well began in the 1980s and Great Boulder signed a joint venture agreement with original prospector Scott Wilson in 2020. Since then, it has drilled at prospects Ironbark and this week's success, Mulga Bill, the company's primary asset. Analysis suggests Mulga Bill is an intermediate sulphidation epithermal, a rare gold deposit type for Western Australia.

In Mexico, Torex Gold drill hole ML22-823D cut 28.4 metres grading 40.48 grams gold per tonne from 452.6 metres depth for a grade x width of 1,150.

"Drilling targeting spatial gaps along the existing southern and northern boundaries of the deposit was successful in delivering the required drill density to bring incremental mineralization into the inferred resource category," CEO Jody Kuzenko said in a Mar. 8 news release.

Torex spent US$19 million on drilling 27,400 metres last year at Media Luna, which is part of the company's Morelos property about 180 km southwest of Mexico City. It plans to upgrade the resource to a measured estimate from inferred.

Earlier this month, Kuzenko said first production from Media Luna remains on track for next year's fourth quarter. Construction of the Guajes tunnel under the Balsas River is proceeding well, she said.

In Ecuador, Luminex drill hole CU23-18 cut 317 metres grading 0.97 grams gold per tonne from 28 metres depth for a grade x width of 307. The result was among several from the Cuyes West structure at the Condor project on the border with Peru, about 600 km southeast of Quito.

The hole intersected multiple hanging wall high-grade structures, notably 3 metres grading 39.1 grams gold and 61.7 grams silver from 128 metres depth, and 31 metres grading 1.3 grams gold and 13.1 grams silver from 263 metres down hole, the company said in a news release Mar. 3.

"The style of mineralization at Cuyes West and in the hanging wall package is identical to that at the Camp deposit, 600 metres to the west," Luminex said. "At a property scale, these mineralized structures are interpreted to be hosted in ring and radial fractures around the Los Cuyes Diatreme."