USD $4,165.18
Goldman A maiden 293,000oz Mineral Resource at Mt Penck has lifted Tolu’s reported gold resources to 1.33Moz across three Papua New Guinea deposits.
Tolu Minerals Limited (ASX:TOK) has reported a maiden Inferred Mineral Resource of 7.3Mt at 1.2g/t Au for 293,000oz at its Mt Penck Gold-Copper Project in West New Britain.
The estimate, reported at a 0.5g/t Au cut-off, takes Tolu’s reported gold resources to 1.33Moz across Tolukuma, Saki and Mt Penck. The total is up 111% from the 631,000oz reported at the start of September, following the earlier increase in the Tolukuma resource to 909,000oz.
Mt Penck’s maiden estimate is classified entirely as Inferred and is based on historical drilling completed between 1989 and 2011. The database comprises 115 holes for 12,267m, including 33 aircore holes and 82 diamond holes. Tolu has not drilled at Mt Penck.
The resource is constrained to about 200m below surface and remains open down dip and along strike. Tolu said the first phase of its planned work would target infill and step-out drilling at Kavola and seek to bring the adjacent Peni Creek prospect into a combined shallow resource.
The company is also evaluating funding options for a staged two-year Mt Penck programme without drawing on funds committed to restarting the Tolukuma mine, where a 75,000m near-mine drilling campaign is under way and production is planned to resume in early 2027.
Dr Chris Muller, Managing Director and CEO of Tolu Minerals, said:
At the start of this month Tolu’s reported gold resources stood at 631,000 ounces. Today that number is 1.33 million ounces. The Tolukuma upgrade did most of the work and remains our focus: the restart is fully permitted, seven rigs are drilling and we intend to be in production early next year.
Mt Penck is a different kind of opportunity and deserves to be understood on its own terms. It starts with 293,000 ounces of shallow gold that is open in every direction and will be the first target of our drills. But what makes it compelling is what sits beneath and beside that gold cap. Our geophysics has imaged a copper-gold porphyry system 1.6 kilometres long that has effectively never been drilled, and the one hole that reached into its halo carried sulphides from top to bottom. Testing that system with the first deep holes is the most exciting drilling Tolu will do outside Tolukuma. And because the project sits on the coast, three hours by road from Kimbe and its deep-water port and with its own water access through the wharf at Silavuti, the development options for a large copper-gold system are not constrained by the logistics that limit so many highland projects.
The resource is built from historical drilling and we have been careful to report it as Inferred and to set out its limitations. What gives us confidence is the work done since Tolu acquired the ground: trenching at Peni Creek, the airborne MT survey over the entire licence, the independent geophysical review and now an Independent Geologist’s Report that pulls it together into a costed, staged program. Mt Penck deserves its own funding and its own team so it can move at pace without competing with the mine for capital, and the Board is assessing how best to achieve that while keeping the upside with Tolu shareholders.
