The company’s Laverton region holdings
A1 Minerals holds about 920 square kilometers in the highly prospective Laverton region which is considered to be second most prolific gold area in Western Australia outside of Kalgoorlie.
The company is mining the Beta deposit, 40 kilometres south east of Laverton and, early in 2011, was advancing approvals to commence mining the Alpha deposit, about 15 km from Beta.
Based on known shallow reserves the Beta and Alpha open pits are scheduled to be completed late in 2011.
Early in 2011 the company plans to step up resource confirmation drilling based on the 2009 stated JORC Code resources of 1.4 million oz on all our tenements. The licenses north of Laverton, including Epsilon and Delta, contain about 70% of the stated resources.
This work will include a strong focus on the Epsilon project area that takes in the Ben Hur and King of Creation mining leases.
The company’s leases encompass greenfields targets and areas of historic high-grade underground mining and more modern open cut operations, including Mikado (renamed Beta), Cork Tree Well (Delta) and King of Creation (Epsilon).
Historic production at Cork Tree Well (mined by Austwhim from 1986-88) was about 700,000 tonnes treated for a recovery of 45,900 ounces. The grade treated was about 2.3 grams per tonne, this was a virgin discovery at the ttime.
The King of Creation pit (mined by Ashton Gold between 1988-90) produced 811,000 tonnes for 57,700 oz at a head grade of 2.2 g/t gold. At the turn of the century the various King of Creation, Queen of Creation and other “Creations” would have had to meet the maxim of the day – grades of at least half an ounce to the tonne.
A1 Minerals Tenement Holdings
181KB PDF.