- Region: Laverton
- Ownership: 100%
- Location: Surrounding the town of Laverton
- Product: Gold
- Project Status: Exploration & development
OVERVIEW
The Laverton district is one of the best endowed gold regions in Australia with over 28 million ounces of gold produced in recent history and two world class producing mines: The 10Moz Sunrise Dam mine and 8Moz Wallaby mine. Focus has a significant, strategic landholding in the region following its takeover of Crescent Gold in 2011 which saw it pick up a spread of tenements covering much of the prospective geology between Sunrise Dam and Granny Smith in the south, to Lancefield and Admiral Hill in the north. The company is currently focused on new discoveries, targeting higher grade, larger scale ore bodies, while also paying particular attention to areas that have had little attention in the past.
KEY ASSETS
- Strategic Landholding
The Laverton operation comprises a significant portfolio of tenements in a district where many multi-million ounce mines have been developed. This includes the high-grade Lancefield underground mine which was mined by WMC at 6g/t in the 1990s, as well as a series of large scale open pit developments that have been mined under Focus and its predecessors. The project has numerous exploration opportunities including extensions to existing open pit resources, high grade underground targets, and conceptual large scale, bulk mining targets.
- Barnicoat Mill
As a part of the takeover of Crescent, Focus acquired the 1.45Mtpa Barnicoat plant which sits central to the majority of the Laverton operations. Barnicoat was refurbished in 2008 and has been kept on care and maintenance. Focus has already undertaken a number of scoping studies to assess the opportunities for recommissioning and or expanding the mill.
EXPLORATION
There are six major regional gold producing structures running through the tenements with 110km of strike. However, less than 50km has been tested to-date with limited, shallow drilling. The current focus of exploration is to combine extensive testing of known brown-fields areas such as the Barnicoat trend, as well as evaluating and prioritising other prospective greenfields tenements within the Laverton package. Both the Barnicoat and Euro Trends hold significant potential for extension at depth and along strike. Extensive testing of the known resources as well as locating new resources along these strongly mineralised trends forms a large part of the long term goals for current exploration in the area. Investigation of these trends will consist of geophysical surveys coupled with deep reverse circulation and diamond drilling. The lesser worked areas of the Laverton package are currently being evaluated to determine the best techniques to move forward with cost effective and productive exploration programs.
GEOLOGY
The Laverton Gold Project is situated on the Laverton Greenstone Belt (LGB) in the Yilgarn Craton of Western Australia. The LGB is believed to be more than 2,500m years old. The LGB hosts other gold mines including Granny Smith, Sunrise Dam and Wallaby. Gold production from the belt is estimated to be in excess of 28moz.
HISTORY
The town site of Laverton is located in the eastern goldfields approximately 250 km north of Kalgoorlie. Gold was discovered near here in 1896, and one of the early promoters of gold mining in the area was Dr C W Laver, after whom the town site is named. The “Craiggiemore” mine was one of the most successful, and by 1897 a residential and business area had been established on the west side of the mine. In 1969 the area gained international prominence off the back of the Poseidon bubble after a prospector named Ken Shirley discovered a huge nickel deposit in the area. This deposit was developed into the Windarra Nickel Project, which mined and processed nickel for over 20 years. During the 1990s Sons of Gwalia also successfully developed a number of gold mines in the area.