DGR Global’s share price jumped nearly nine per cent this week after the company delivered a JORC resource on material contained within a tailings dam at its Shamrock project in Queensland, Australia.
The mineral resource estimate is comprised of 767,063 dry tonnes of material grading 0.58 grams per tonne gold and 11 grams per tonne silver. The contained metal comes in at 14,000 ounces of gold and 265,000 ounces of silver, with the gold residing in the indicated category and the silver in the inferred category.
Those figures reconcile neatly with the original calculations done by the DGR team using historical records.
Because Shamrock is not by any means a new area for a company to go mining. Historical production in the vicinity of the Shamrock project since the 1990s has taken place at three distinct mines: the Manumbar, Shamrock, and Tablelands mines, as well as at various other sites in the region.
The largest proportion of the material mined in the area was at Manumbar where 50,000 ounces of gold was produced from material grading an average of 5.5 grams per tonne gold.
Shamrock and Tablelands are reported to have produced 35,000 ounces and 5,000 ounces respectively while an additional 10,000 ounces is reported to have been produced at various other sites.
As a result of the significant historic production, a large amount of tailings were produced. These were deposited behind a tailings dam from multiple outlet points. According to historical records, gold recoveries at the mines ranged between 85 per cent and 90 per cent with approximately 690,000 tonnes of ore milled.
Given those figures, the DGR Global team hypothesized that some 11,000 to 17,600 ounces of gold could be contained within the tailings, a figure high enough to justify investigation through an exploration program. And so it proved.
DGR used a floating pontoon drilling rig to drill a total of 61 holes into the tailings facility at approximately 25 metre intervals in a series of straight lines.
Samples collected during the drilling campaign were forwarded to ALS Laboratories for assaying via fire assay and aqua regia digest with atomic absorption finishing.
Analysis of the drill results has resulted in a deep understanding of the tailings material which tends to present in higher grades near the historic discharge points.
Following significant buying interest, DGR Global’s shares are currently priced at A$0.037 on the Australian Stock Exchange.