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    Brightstar–Aquirian Goldfields deal: drill and blast insights for mine planners

    April 16, 2026|

    Reviewed by Tom Sullivan

    Brightstar–Aquirian Goldfields deal: drill and blast insights for mine planners

    First reported on Australian Mining

    30 Second Briefing

    Brightstar Resources has signed a strategic agreement with Aquirian Limited to provide drilling and energetics services for its Goldfields Hub gold project in Western Australia’s Eastern Goldfields. The deal brings in Aquirian’s integrated drill and blast capability, including explosives supply and blast design, across Brightstar’s planned open pits around the Menzies and Laverton areas. For mine planners and geotechs, the partnership signals early standardisation of blast parameters and powder factors across multiple deposits, which should simplify slope performance monitoring and downstream fragmentation control.

    Technical Brief

    • Unified contractor model reduces interface risk between drill crews, explosives suppliers and mine planning teams.
    • Early engagement at project stage supports pre‑production test blasting to calibrate fragmentation and wall control.
    • Contract structure is suited to staged pit development, allowing rapid mobilisation between satellite deposits.
    • Standardised drill and blast data streams will aid reconciliation of powder factor against ore recovery and dilution.
    • Similar hub‑and‑spoke drill–blast contracts are increasingly used in Western Australian goldfields to manage contractor availability.

    Our Take

    In our database, Brightstar Resources appears repeatedly in Western Australian gold coverage this year, with the Goldfields Hub drill-and-blast award following closely on the $180 million funding package secured for the broader Goldfields project, signalling that capital is now being rapidly converted into execution contracts.

    The Goldfields Hub work sits alongside Brightstar’s planned 1.5 Mt/y Laverton processing plant and the upgraded Beta mill hub, indicating a hub-and-spoke strategy where early drill-and-blast at satellite deposits is critical to keeping new central gold processing capacity in Australia’s Eastern Goldfields fed from day one.

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    Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.

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