Kula onto airborne geophysical work at WA nickel-PGE-gold play

Mineral explorer Kula Gold will launch a pair of airborne geophysical surveys at its wholly owned Westonia nickel-PGE-gold project in WA’s Southern Cross region following on from its maiden drill program. The successful exploration campaign delivered a suite of anomalous hits and latest work will include a VTEM and magnetic survey.

Kula says the work will be helmed by seismic consultancy group UTS Geophysics and will consist of 417-line kilometres spread across a southern tenement of the project.

The programs are scheduled for a November kick-off and will be used to refine a raft of drill targets that were defined through its earlier work. Kula says the area has seen no historical drilling.

The ground’s prospectivity was initially flagged after a review of reprocessed public gravity and magnetic geophysical data, which lit up a handful of anomalous targets.

The company followed the review with a geochemical auger sampling program in August that returned several encouraging results, including a combined platinum and palladium grade of up to 125 parts per billion and gold sniffs that ran up to 35 ppb.

Kula also bagged a quartz vein sample grading 1.85 grams per tonne gold in its maiden campaign and believes completing seismic work across the zone could help it vector in on a deeper source of the ground’s mineralisation.

Despite the modest grades, management is encouraged by the anomalous returns and believes the figures, combined with the operation’s proximity to Ramelius Resources’ productive Edna May gold mine could mean richer results are within reach.

The Westonia nickel-PGE-gold project sits about 5km from Edna May – an asset that has historically churned over 1 million ounces of gold and currently boasts a resource of 990,000 ounces of contained gold.

Kula snapped up a raft of exploration licences around Edna May last year and now lays claim to a ground position of about 350 square kilometres near the mine. The play forms part of its exploration strategy to investigate the precious metal potential in zones close to operating gold mines.

Management believes the policy could allow it to quickly carry a discovery through to the development phase without the hassle and outlay associated with greenfield exploration.

The company once held interest in a suite of projects in Papua New Guinea, however its re-invigorated portfolio now houses several gold, copper, lithium, nickel, PGE and kaolin assets in Western Australia.

Work is progressing on the battery metals front, with the company stating it is also planning magnetic surveys for its Brunswick multi-mineral project in the Southwest region of WA. The proposed campaign will be used to explore the ground’s lithium potential.

With Ramelius Resources’ Edna May gold mine a mere 5km away and a slew of encouraging hits already under its belt, Kula will be hoping its next round of exploration can push its Westonia dream a step closer to reality.

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