An Australian exploration company is ready to make a splash in the Timmins camp with a very promising nickel and gold project.
Aston Minerals expects to release a nickel estimate from its Edleston Project by the end of this month. In the meantime, the company has turned out a first-ever gold resource count on the property, 60 kilometres south of Timmins.
The company has yet to do any technical or economic studies on the gold asset but said in a Jan. 19 news release that if brought into production the best method would be open pit given the deposit’s shallowness to surface.
The estimated gold count is more than 1.5 million ounces at an average of 1.,0 grams per tonne within 48.1 million tonnes. The indicated resource is 400,200 ounces at a grade of 0.90 grams per tonne within 14.0 million tonnes.
The resource estimate is based on 60 diamond drill holes from a 28,360-metre drill program between February 2021 through to December 2022.
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Edleston sits on the Cadillac-Larder Lake Fault Zone, a major geological system which hosts a number of gold mines and deposits in northeastern Ontario.
Aston, an ASX-traded company, acquired Edleston in the summer of 2020 and were on the hunt for gold before discovering nickel a year later at a spot on the property called Bardswell.
Edleston was explored in the past by 55 North Mining (formerly SGX Resources) with more than $10 million spent on geophysics and drilling. Predecessor companies completed a total of 156 drill holes for 46,000 metres of drilling.
In a Jan. 19 news release, the company said the scale of the gold mineralization at Edleton represents only 20 per cent of the strikel length that’s been drilled off to date.
Aston said they’re looking to “monetize” this gold asset through a sale, a spinoff company or a ‘farm-in” by a gold mining company.
In a statement, Dale Ginn, Aston’s managing director, called the release of the gold estimate a “major milestone” in having outlined a “substantial” resource in less than two years.
