Alto eyes Mid West drill campaign along 1km gold anomaly

Alto Metals has defined a 1km-long gold anomaly after a successful fine-fraction infill soil sampling program at the Sandstone North prospect within its greater Sandstone gold project in WA’s Mid West region.

The company is planning a first-pass air-core (AC) campaign to test the anomaly near where previous drilling revealed high-grade results.

Assays from prior drilling below historical workings about 1.5km south of the newly-defined trend returned an impressive 15m intersection grading 9.1 grams per tonne gold from 82m including 3m at 32.1g/t from 94m.

Additional high-grade results from previous exploration show a 13m hit going 5.2g/t gold from 34m including a 1m section at an impressive 58g/t gold from 39m. Shallower assays from historic drilling in the area delivered 15m grading 5.4g/t gold from 24m including 5m reading 10.8g/t from 30m.

The latest fine-fraction sampling program follows a previous campaign that identified a 6km-long gold-arsenic soil anomaly that remains open along strike and down plunge at its significant north-trending and largely-unexplored target.

While the area along the anomaly is relatively untested, high-grade gold mineralisation has been intersected in previous drilling, mostly by Western Mining Company (WMC). That drilling was confined to testing peak values in a small number of gold soil anomalies directly beneath the main historical workings, which are within a sedimentary unit close to a contact with ultramafic rocks and limited to a strike length of 300m within the overall 6km anomalous zone.

Assays from the latest sampling campaign highlighted four specific areas with results of up to 0.1g/t gold that correlates with anomalous arsenic values. Management says previous work by WMC shows arsenic is associated with gold mineralisation at the nearby historical workings.

Our Sandstone North gold target is shaping up nicely, with these latest infill soil results highlighting a strong north-south trending gold anomaly that is coherent with arsenic values and correlates perfectly with a major north-south interpreted structure. Given the structural setting and high-grade gold results reported in historical drilling to the south, this soils program has defined a compelling target that we anticipate testing with an initial low-cost air-core drilling program in the coming weeks.

The company’s total indicated and inferred resources for its greater Sandstone gold project currently stand at 23.5 million tonnes at a grade of 1.4g/t gold for a total of 1.05 million ounces of contained gold.

Management is continuing its low-cost regional targeting work, including a review of historical data sets, while it forges ahead with growing the resource targets at the greater Sandstone gold project.

The company believes the high grades reported from the project highlight the under-explored potential of Alto’s tenure, which covers more than 740 square kilometres of the northern and eastern parts of the Sandstone greenstone belt, situated about 6km north of the WA town of Sandstone.

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