Drilling blitz to unlock Brightstar 1.5M-ounce WA | Australian Markets

A colossal 80,000-metre drilling blitz at Brightstar Resources’ Sandstone gold project has the company steaming in the direction of the development of a new 1.5-million-ounce Western Australian gold hub on the long-dormant project.

Hot on the heels of its 2024 acquisitions of Alto Metals and the Montague East gold project from Gateway Mining, Brightstar is firming up its drilling and feasibility research to unlock Sandstone’s untapped potential.

Brightstar’s absolutely funded exploration juggernaut is set to unlock deeper and doubtlessly extremely profitable ounces throughout the consolidated project, because it eyes a 2.5–3.5 million tonne each year processing plant option. The company goals to unlock a area unmined for more than 15 years.

The company says it has already drilled 23,500m of a broader 134,000m program deliberate for this 12 months. It has assays pending from high-grade prospects exterior of the city of Sandstone, together with Lord Nelson, Bull Oak, Havilah and the Indomitable Camp.

Early outcomes are lighting up high-grade underground assets, with intercepts returning hits of 3m at 26.3 grams per tonne (g/t) gold and 4m at 59.0g/t. The intercepts trace at never-tested high-grade assets at depth throughout the project, which may improve its financial viability significantly.

Brightstar says its prefeasibility research, slated for early subsequent 12 months, is focussed totally on the prevailing assets throughout Sandstone. The assets have been chased within the highest 150m from floor during occasions of weaker gold costs that ignored the area’s depth potential.

With gold costs hovering at about $5150 per ounce – more than 10 occasions the $500 per ounce price seen for many of Sandstone’s operational period -Brightstar believes it’s poised to capitalise on a main manufacturing alternative in a single of WA’s underdeveloped gold-bearing greenstone belts.

The high-grade outcomes at deposits like Vanguard North and Whistler, mixed with new exploration targets within the extremely potential and well-endowed broader Sandstone greenstone belt, place Sandstone for materials useful resource growth. Concurrently, our PFS workstreams are advancing towards a 1H CY26 supply, with a 2.5–3.5Mtpa processing throughput vary recognized as an optimum plant measurement to assist our objective of turning into a +200koz pa gold producer within 5 years throughout our portfolio.

Brightstar’s exploration workforce is leaving no stone unturned, with two-thirds of its portfolio-wide 134,000m drilling funds earmarked to broaden Sandstone’s 33Mt useful resource, which grades a respectable 1.5g/t gold for 1.5M ounces.

Drilling may even deal with greenfield discovery targets throughout the project, together with Hacks West, Bulchina South, Sandstone North and not too long ago uncovered Duplex prospects, which the company says are primed for follow-up testing.

Sandstone’s historic exploration was a mere teaser, with previous homeowners reminiscent of Herald and Troy pulling more than 600,000 ounces from shallow oxide materials at a puny 600ktpa plant.

Brightstar’s daring imaginative and prescient dwarfs that scale, leveraging sealed highways and low-cost ore haulage from Montague, 70 kilometres away, at much less than 0.1g/t gold-equivalent to feed a trendy 3Mtpa mill close to Sandstone city to spit out some 130,000 ounces yearly.

At the top of the March quarter, the company was sitting fairly with $7M money within the kitty, not together with proceeds from the 100 kilograms of gold it produced via an ore buy settlement with Genesis Minerals in March. It can also be finalising a US$11.5M (A$18M) debt facility with United States-based Ocean Partners, which might be used to fast-track the company’s aggressive growth agenda.

With Sandstone’s 1.5M-ounce useful resource simply scratching close to floor, Brightstar believes its aggressive drilling marketing campaign is poised to unlock deeper, high-grade lodes on the long-overlooked Sandstone-Gum Creek greenstone belts. This area is now within the highlight, thanks to Brightstar, as a prime goal for potential major-scale manufacturing.

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