VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / November 28, 2024 / Mawson Gold Limited ("Mawson" or the "Company") (TSXV:MAW, Financial)(Frankfurt:MXR)(OTC PINK:MWSNF) announces Southern Cross Gold Ltd. ("Southern Cross Gold" or "SXG") has made another significant discovery at its 100%-owned Sunday Creek Gold-Antimony Project, located an hour's drive north of Melbourne.
High Level Take Away:
Southern Cross Gold's Sunday Creek Project Continues to Validate Its Position as One of the Most Significant Global Gold-Antimony Discoveries in Recent Years SXG's latest drilling has revealed exceptional gold grades at depth at the historic Golden Dyke mine area, supporting the growth potential of this zone, with key highlights including:
The critical metal component adds another compelling dimension to this story. Sunday Creek's antimony content (approximately 20% of in-situ recoverable value) positions it as one of the few high-quality antimony projects in the Western world at a time when China's recent export restrictions are pressuring Western defence supply chains. SXG's systematic exploration approach is paying off, with five drill rigs currently operating at the site and a sixth scheduled to arrive in December 2024. This bold exploration program, which plans to complete 60 km of drilling over the next year, reflects SXG's confidence in Sunday Creek's potential. Current global uncertainty adds a compelling overlay to Sunday Creek as it is driving interest in both gold and critical minerals such as antimony. At the same time Sunday Creek offers exposure to these metals through a single, high-grade asset in a tier-one jurisdiction . We expect the next 12 months of drilling to prove transformative in revealing the deposit's true scale.
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Michael Hudson, Mawson Interim CEO and Executive Chairman, states : "These results from Golden Dyke continue to validate our conviction that Sunday Creek represents one of the most significant global gold discoveries in recent years. The consistency and grade of mineralisation we're seeing at depth matches or exceeds what we've found closer to surface, and importantly, these results fall entirely outside our January 2024 exploration target area.
"Our systematic exploration approach has delivered 48 holes above 100 gram-metres gold equivalent, and we're seeing consistent high-grade mineralisation from surface to depths exceeding 1,100 meters at Apollo and Rising Sun. With five rigs currently drilling and extremely high and consistent gold and antimony grades, we believe we're still in the early stages of revealing Sunday Creek's true scale. The next 12 months of drilling will be transformative as we push to define the full extent of this remarkable mineral system."
Mineralisation follows a distinct "ladder" structure, where the main host (100 m to 200 m wide) extends between the side rails deep into the earth, with multiple cross-cutting vein sets that host the gold forming the rungs. Each of these "rungs" carries the potential for high-grade gold and antimony mineralisation with at least 66 defined to date.
The latest drill hole, SDDSC141, was strategically positioned to test the system at depth, drilling parallel to the main structure. It successfully intercepted eight distinct mineralised zones, each representing one of these ladder "rungs." The hole was drilled 65 m to 100 m below a previous successful hole (SDDSC132) and intersected multiple high-grade intervals, including an impressive zone of 5.5 m grading 26.1 g/t gold equivalent from 589.3 m depth while testing a prospective corridor of 283 m (cumulative downhole length of dyke and sericite/carbonate altered sediment). SDDSC141 included 9 intercepts of Au > 20 g/t (up to 196 g/t) and 5 intercepts of Sb > 2% (up to 4.1%) . This hole is the fourth in a program testing high-grade mineralisation at depth underneath the prolific Golden Dyke Mine.
Highlights from drillhole SDDSC141 include:
2.3 m @ 4.3 g/t AuEq (3.4 g/t Au, 0.5% Sb) from 448.8 m, including:
1.6 m @ 4.7 g/t AuEq (3.4 g/t Au, 0.7% Sb) from 448.8 m
2.8 m @ 2.3 g/t AuEq (1.4 g/t Au, 0.5% Sb) from 458.2 m
1.2 m @ 1.9 g/t AuEq (1.3 g/t Au, 0.3% Sb) from 505.9 m
1.8 m @ 15.3 g/t AuEq (10.0 g/t Au, 2.8% Sb) from 525.1 m
4.1 m @ 9.0 g/t AuEq (8.3 g/t Au, 0.4% Sb) from 534.0 m, including:
0.6 m @ 13.2 g/t AuEq (13.0 g/t Au, 0.1% Sb) from 534.0 m
1.0 m @ 26.4 g/t AuEq (25.3 g/t Au, 0.6% Sb) from 536.6 m
1.6 m @ 5.9 g/t AuEq (4.5 g/t Au, 0.7% Sb) from 549.8 m, including:
0.8 m @ 9.3 g/t AuEq (7.5 g/t Au, 1.0% Sb) from 550.6 m
5.5 m @ 26.1 g/t AuEq (25.4 g/t Au, 0.4% Sb) from 589.3 m, including:
1.4 m @ 101.6 g/t AuEq (101.1 g/t Au, 0.3% Sb) from 592.4 m
1.5 m @ 2.0 g/t AuEq (1.7 g/t Au, 0.2% Sb) from 603.8 m
6.3 m @ 5.0 g/t AuEq (4.8 g/t Au, 0.1% Sb) from 613.0 m, including:
0.6 m @ 24.3 g/t AuEq (24.0 g/t Au, 0.2% Sb) from 613.0 m
1.7 m @ 9.0 g/t AuEq (8.7 g/t Au, 0.2% Sb) from 617.5 m
2.8 m @ 11.4 g/t AuEq (10.0 g/t Au, 0.7% Sb) from 621.3 m, including:
0.1 m @ 188.2 g/t AuEq (188.0 g/t Au, 0.1% Sb) from 621.3 m
2.4 m @ 1.8 g/t AuEq (1.4 g/t Au, 0.2% Sb) from 634.7 m
1.5 m @ 2.2 g/t AuEq (2.2 g/t Au, 0.0% Sb) from 650.3 m
0.2 m @ 10.5 g/t AuEq (2.8 g/t Au, 4.1
Pending Results and Update
SXG has 60 km of drilling planned at Sunday Creek over the next year. Sixteen holes (SDDSC129, 133, 136, 139-140, 142-150, 146W1, 149W1, 120W1) are currently being processed and analyzed, with five holes (SDDSC149W1, 151, 152, 153, 154) in progress (Figure 1 and 2).
Further Information
No upper gold grade cut is applied in the averaging and intervals are reported as drill thickness. However, during future Mineral Resource studies, the requirement for assay top cutting will be assessed. The Company notes that due to rounding of assay results to one significant figure, minor variations in calculated composite grades may occur.
Figures 1 to 4 show project location, plan and longitudinal views of drill results reported here and Tables 2 to 4 provide collar and assay data. The true thickness of the mineralised intervals reported individually as estimated true widths ("ETW"), otherwise they are interpreted to be approximately 25% to 50% of the sampled thickness for other reported holes. Lower grades were cut at 1.0 g/t AuEq lower cutoff over a maximum width of 2 m with higher grades cut at 5.0 g/t AuEq lower cutoff over a maximum of 1 m width unless specified unless otherwise* specified to demonstrate higher grade assays.
About Sunday Creek
The Sunday Creek epizonal-style gold project is located 60 km north of Melbourne within 16,900 hectares of granted exploration tenements. SXG is also the freehold landholder of 133.29 hectares that form the key portion in and around the main drilled area at the Sunday Creek Project.
Gold and antimony form in a relay of vein sets that cut across a steeply dipping zone of intensely altered rocks (the "host"). When observed from above, the host resembles the side rails of a ladder, where the sub-vertical mineralised vein sets are the rungs that extend from surface to depth. At Apollo and Rising Sun these individual ‘rungs' have been defined over 600 m depth extent from surface to 1,100 m below surface, are 2.5 m to 3.5 m wide (median widths) (and up to 10 m), and 20 m to 100 m in strike. At Golden Dyke and Christina the individual ‘rungs' have been defined up to 320 m in vertical extent and up to 520 m from surface.
Cumulatively, 147 drill holes for 64,849.19 m have been reported by SXG (and Mawson Gold Ltd) from Sunday Creek since late 2020. An additional 12 holes for 582.55 m from Sunday Creek were abandoned due to deviation or hole conditions. Fourteen drillholes for 2,383 m have been reported regionally outside of the main Sunday Creek drill area. A total of 64 historic drill holes for 5,599 m were completed from the late 1960s to 2008. The project now contains a total of forty-eight (48) >100 g/t AuEq x m and fifty-six (56) >50 to 100 g/t AuEq x m drill holes by applying a 2 m @ 1 g/t lower cut.
Our systematic drill program is strategically targeting these significant vein formations, initially these have been defined over 1,350 m strike of the host from Christina to Apollo prospects, of which approximately 620 m has been more intensively drill tested (Rising Sun to Apollo). At least 66 ‘rungs' have been defined to date, defined by high-grade intercepts (20 g/t to >7,330 g/t Au) along with lower grade edges. Ongoing step-out drilling is aiming to uncover the potential extent of this mineralised system.
Geologically, the project is located within the Melbourne Structural Zone in the Lachlan Fold Belt. The regional host to the Sunday Creek mineralisation is an interbedded turbidite sequence of siltstones and minor sandstones metamorphosed to sub-greenschist facies and folded into a set of open north-west trending folds.
Further Information
Further discussion and analysis of the Sunday Creek project by Southern Cross Gold is available on the SXG website at www.southerncrossgold.com.au.
Critical Metal Epizonal Gold-Antimony Deposits
Sunday Creek is an epizonal gold-antimony deposit formed in the late Devonian (like Fosterville, Costerfield and Redcastle), 60 million years later than mesozonal gold systems formed in Victoria (for example Ballarat and Bendigo). Epizonal deposits are a form of orogenic gold deposit classified according to their depth of formation: epizonal (<6 km), mesozonal (6-12 km) and hypozonal (>12 km).
Epizonal deposits in Victoria often have associated high levels of the critical metal, antimony, and Sunday Creek is no exception. China claims a 56 per cent share of global mined supplies of antimony, according to a 2023 European Union study. Antimony features highly on the critical minerals lists of many countries including Australia, the United States of America, Canada, Japan and the European Union. Australia ranks seventh for antimony production despite all production coming from a single mine at Costerfield in Victoria, located nearby to all SXG projects. Antimony alloys with lead and tin which results in improved properties for solders, munitions, bearings and batteries. Antimony is a prominent additive for halogen-containing flame retardants. Adequate supplies of antimony are critical to the world's energy transition, and to the high-tech industry, especially the semi-conductor and defence sectors where it is a critical additive to primers in munitions.
In August 2024, the Chinese government announced it will place export limits on antimony and antimony products. This will put pressure on Western defence supply chains and negatively affect the supply of the metal and push up pricing given China's dominance of the supply of the metal in the global markets. This is positive for SXG as we are likely to have one of the very few large and high-quality projects of antimony in the western world that can feed western demand into the future.
Antimony represents approximately 20% in situ recoverable value of Sunday Creek at an AuEq of 1.88.
Technical Background and Qualified Person
The Qualified Person, Michael Hudson, Executive Chairman and a director of Mawson Gold, and a Fellow of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, has reviewed, verified and approved the technical contents of this release.
Analytical samples are transported to the Bendigo facility of On Site Laboratory Services ("On Site") which operates under both an ISO 9001 and NATA quality systems. Samples were prepared and analyzed for gold using the fire assay technique (PE01S method; 25 gram charge), followed by measuring the gold in solution with flame AAS equipment. Samples for multi-element analysis (BM011 and over-range methods as required) use aqua regia digestion and ICP-MS analysis. The QA/QC program of Southern Cross Gold consists of the systematic insertion of certified standards of known gold content, blanks within interpreted mineralized rock and quarter core duplicates. In addition, On Site inserts blanks and standards into the analytical process.
MAW considers that both gold and antimony that are included in the gold equivalent calculation ("AuEq") have reasonable potential to be recovered at Sunday Creek, given current geochemical understanding, historic production statistics and geologically analogous mining operations. Historically, ore from Sunday Creek was treated onsite or shipped to the Costerfield mine, located 54 km to the northwest of the project, for processing during WW1. The Costerfield mine corridor, now owned by Mandalay Resources Ltd contains two million ounces of equivalent gold (Mandalay Q3 2021 Results), and in 2020 was the sixth highest-grade global underground mine and a top 5 global producer of antimony.
MAW considers that it is appropriate to adopt the same gold equivalent variables as Mandalay Resources Ltd in its Mandalay Technical Report, 2024 dated March 28, 2024. The gold equivalence formula used by Mandalay Resources was calculated using Costerfield's 2023 production costs, using a gold price of US$1,900 per ounce, an antimony price of US$12,000 per tonne and 2023 total year metal recoveries of 94% for gold and 89% for antimony, and is as follows:
