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DIGGERS & DEALERS PREVIEW

Kalamazoo reaches for the stars

by Mark Andrews

aul Adams has had to act quickly since joining Ashburton is considered a transformational
P Kalamazoo Resources Ltd as non-executive project for Kalamazoo and with Adams leading
director and Ashburton gold project manager this the charge, the company has a good chance of
year. discovering its destiny sooner rather than later.
Having successfully built up the high-grade Adams successfully turned the 30,000oz of
Penny West project (799,000t @ 13.8 g/t gold gold Spectrum Metals had at Penny West into
for 355,500oz, including 569,000t @ 16.8 g/t 355,000oz over nine months and 30,000m of
for 306,800oz at Penny North) for eventual sale drilling.
to Ramelius Resources Ltd for $200 million this Initially, Adams will have a budget of about
year, Adams wasn’t expecting to be boots-on- $3.25 million to spend on Ashburton, with RC
ground in Western Australia’s Pilbara in 2020. drilling planned for November/December before
“Again, it was right time, right place,” Adams breaking over Christmas to ponder results and
told GMJ in light of Kalamazoo completing returning to the field in March.
the acquisition of the Ashburton project from Paul Adams With Rolfe onboard, Kalamazoo has the intel to hit
Northern Star Resources Ltd. the right spots from the outset and Adams hopes
“As far as our WA projects are concerned, this to have 2-3 moz gold defined at Ashburton in the
has put us there in terms of resource and we next 12-24 months.
need to work hard and quickly to put value into From there, more than one development option is
the project. We have subsequently found out that being considered by Kalamazoo.
there was at least one other party gunning for that
“The requirement to perhaps build a POX plant
project quite hard.”
on site; we’re actually not wedded to that. There
Northern Star’s rise as multi-mine producer saw are a number of ways of skinning this cat and it
Ashburton fall down the pecking order, but only may well just be that the lower capex, lower risk
after a resource of 1.65 moz gold @ 2.5 g/t, with gold float concentrate option could be the key to
541,000oz in the indicated category, was defined. unlocking the sulphide portions of this deposit,
A payment of $5 million is due to Northern Star which are substantial and we reckon we can
from Kalamazoo when the first 250,000t of ore grow them,” Adams said.
in mined at Ashburton, while the former is entitled “We are allocating several hundred thousand
Margy Hawke
to a 2% NSR on the first 250,000 ozpa produced of dollars to do a major metallurgical [test work]
and a 0.75% NSR on any subsequent gold programme so we know what we are dealing
produced from the tenements. with and then we can start to talk to people. The
There is a pre-existing 1.75% royalty on gold interesting thing is that we have already been
production from Ashburton (excluding the contacted by a third party who years ago already
first 250,000oz), with all heritage and mining identified the Ashburton gold project as a potential
agreements with Native Title parties in place. source of high-grade concentrate.
The solid platform Adams has to work with at “That party has gone out independently and
Ashburton has been further consolidated with has all the contacts in the industry in respect
Matthew Rolfe, formerly of Northern Star, and Dr to marketing high-grade concentrate. He has
Margy Hawke onboard as senior geologists with already run his rule over the project, so there
Kalamazoo. are people out there that have identified the
“Matt has lots of ideas and has looked at the potential for this project to produce high-grade
property for a very long time and formulated all concentrate.”
these theories and targets. Margy on the other Matthew Rolfe While Adams takes care of the WA-based
side is the absolute intellectual equal to Matt, but projects, the company has welcomed Novo
can look at it with a new set of eyes, so between the two of them we Resources Corp to participate in the Queens project in Victoria. An
think we are going to get an optimal drilling solution and that was the option to earn an initial 50%-interest, followed by an additional 20%
basis for bringing the team together in that structure,” Adams said. and potential JV in Queens, subject to conditions, has been granted
“We’re assimilating the data into our own database management to Novo by Kalamazoo. The Queens project and greater Malmsbury
system at the moment as we are starting to put together our targeting goldfield area has known gold endowment and is considered
for the drilling, which we hope to start in Q4 this year.” prospective for high grade Fosterville-style mineralisation.

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