Horizon Gold triple-site hits at Howards: resource and pit design notes for engineers
Reviewed by Tom Sullivan
First reported on Australian Mining
30 Second Briefing
Horizon Gold has confirmed an 800m southern extension to gold mineralisation at the Howards deposit within its 100 per cent-owned Gum Creek gold project in Western Australia’s Mid West. The zone was defined by reverse circulation drilling on 100m-spaced lines, with gold intersected in every hole, materially expanding the known strike length. Results support a stronger resource growth case at Howards, with implications for updated pit shells, mine scheduling and potential scale-up of processing capacity at Gum Creek.
Technical Brief
- Reverse circulation drilling was deployed as the primary method to test the Howards southern extension.
- Every RC hole intersected gold mineralisation, implying strong geological continuity along the newly tested strike.
- The Howards deposit sits within Horizon Gold’s 100 per cent-owned Gum Creek project in WA’s Mid West.
- RC drilling is likely targeting oxide and transitional zones amenable to open-pit extraction and conventional CIL.
- Consistent mineralisation across sections will inform updated geostatistical models and variography for resource estimation.
- Expanded strike length at Howards will require revised geotechnical pit wall assessments and slope design for larger shells.
- Similar RC step-out strategies are increasingly used across WA goldfields to rapidly convert exploration targets into mine-planning inventory.
Our Take
With 100 per cent ownership of the Gum Creek gold project in Western Australia’s Mid West, Horizon Gold has full flexibility to re-optimise pit shells and mine scheduling if the 800m southern extension at Howards converts to additional resources, rather than needing JV alignment.
The 100m drill line spacing cited at Howards is typical of programmes aiming to upgrade from inferred to indicated resources in our database, suggesting Horizon Gold may be positioning Gum Creek for more robust economic studies or a restart decision rather than just early-stage exploration.
Gold projects like Gum Creek are a smaller subset within the 1302 Mining stories and 2436 tag-matched ‘Projects’ pieces in our coverage, which means any material resource growth here could stand out against the more iron ore–heavy Western Australian pipeline highlighted in recent Fortescue coverage.
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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