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Murray Ward
Gateway Mining has dramatically strengthened its financial firepower, securing a whopping $45 million in firm commitments to roll out an aggressive exploration and resource-building campaign at its flagship Yandal gold project in Western Australia.
The heavily supported placement saw global specialist natural resources investor Jupiter Asset Management tip in $20 million as a cornerstone backer, a serious vote of confidence in the company’s exploration strategy and the potential size of the opportunity at Yandal.
The placement, led by JP Equity Partners, will see the issue of 562.5 million new shares at eight cents a pop. The price represents a 16.7 per cent discount to the company’s last closing price and a 9.1 per cent discount to its 15-day volume-weighted average price. The company will issue the new shares without shareholder approval under its existing placement capacity.
The raising builds on an already healthy balance sheet. Gateway already held $15.1 million in cash and liquid securities at the end of June, meaning it is now exceptionally well-funded to execute its plans.
‘The corridor is currently defined across more than 13 kilometres of strike at Cowza, Celia South and Ward.’
Gateway Mining executive chairman Andrew Bray
The fresh cash comes hot on the heels of a spectacular hit in the first-ever fresh rock test of its recently discovered Cowza prospect. The drill bit delivered a 41-metre intercept grading an impressive two grams per tonne (g/t) gold from 104m, including a richer, high-grade 9-metre core assaying a hefty 7.5g/t gold.
The result strongly validates Gateway’s exploration model, which theorised that significant primary mineralisation lay beneath a string of shallow oxide gold hits. The discovery hole was plunged directly under a previous aircore intercept of 16m grading 1.3g/t gold featuring an 8-metre core at 1.9g/t, providing a clear template for what might lurk at depth along the largely untested 4.5 kilometre-long structure at Cowza.
Gateway Mining executive chairman Andrew Bray said: “We now have an outstanding financial platform to accelerate exploration activities across our flagship Yandal Gold Project. Gateway is now fully funded to aggressively build on the initial Cowza results through an extensive program of RC and diamond drilling, systematically testing the depth, strike and continuity of mineralisation.”
The Cowza discovery is just one piece of a much larger puzzle. The prospect forms part of an emerging gold corridor that also includes the 1.5 km long Celia South prospect, 4.5km to the north and the recently drilled seven-kilometre-long Ward trend 6km to the south, representing a combined, near-continuous, known mineralised strike of more than 13 kilometres.
A second reverse circulation (RC) hole drilled 2km north of the headline Cowza hit bolstered confidence in the system’s scale when, despite missing its primary target, it still returned a broad 52-metre anomalous zone grading 0.3g/t gold. Notably, if the thinly tested ground between Ward and Cowza can produce the goods in future drilling, the total mineralised strike might potentially reach a coffee-spitting 19km in length.
The company believes historical drilling in the district has largely missed the main prize by focusing on secondary footwall structures, leaving the primary mineralised corridor almost entirely untested by deeper RC and diamond drilling until now.
The structural key underpinning this alignment is the regional-scale Celia Lineament, a major, deeply penetrating structure in the Eastern Goldfields. This lineament is a crustal-scale plumbing system that historically funnelled mineralising fluids from the earth’s mantle, creating a string of highly productive, multi-million-ounce gold deposits in the richly endowed Yandal greenstone belt, which already houses the nearby Jundee, Bronzewing and Darlot mines.
With its war chest now overflowing, Gateway plans to unleash the drill bit with a massive 120,000m campaign of RC and diamond drilling. The rods will be turning at Cowza, Celia South, Ward, Haflinger, Dusk ’til Dawn and Horse Well, in addition to resource estimation work and regional exploration at its Glenburgh South and Barrelmaker projects.
With the market for gold projects running hot, Gateway has grabbed the opportunity with both hands. The company has its treasury full to bursting, a significant discovery on a premier geological structure and a conga line of drill targets ready to go. The institutional money has clearly seen the potential scale of the prize on offer at Yandal. With a 120,000 metre program ahead of it, it all comes down to the drill bit.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: mattbirney@bullsnbears.com.au
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