Discovery and Growth Overview
Gold areas represent exploration licences. Rollover Australia to view these exploration areas.
St Barbara is committed to growing through discovery and is working to optimise the economic value of our exploration portfolio. This is being achieved by implementing an "Expected Value" methodology to ensure exploration programs focus on high-value targets. This approach ensures that vectors to gold systems are clearly understood and programs are staged to defined milestones. The Expected Value methodology takes into consideration the probability of success, the value of the target, and the cost of exploration to ensure only those projects with a positive expected value are pursued with the aim of drill testing and turning over ground efficiently and effectively as possible.
Maximising gold production through the existing processing plants at the Leonora and Southern Cross Operations in Western Australia remains a priority. A successful example of this strategy that the company aims to replicate is delineation and development of the King of the Hills mine at Leonora which commenced in June 2011 and provides ore to the Gwalia mill. Mineralisation at the King of the Hills project remains open down-plunge. The Tower Hill deposit near Leonora and the Copperhead deposit near Southern Cross are also being evaluated as future ore sources to both operations.
The land holding around existing operations is an important strategic asset for near-mine exploration, covering over ~2,800km2 of highly endowed granite-greenstone terrain in the Eastern Goldfields, the premier gold province of Western Australia. This land bank includes a number of historical high-grade mines which are being carefully evaluated for potential depth and strike extensions. Opportunities also remain to test conceptual targets in a favourable geological setting under cover in these districts.
St Barbara continues to evaluate opportunities in a range of belts throughout Australia, and has established land-holdings in the Gawler Block of South Australia and the East Lachlan Belt in New South Wales. These provinces host world-class iron-oxide copper-gold and porphyry copper gold deposits respectively, both of which extend into poorly exposed areas under cover. Targeting studies are continuing on these projects to assess their potential to advance to drill testing.
St Barbara's project generation activities will ensure a pipeline of quality of projects is delivered for drill testing, as well as actively maintaining an acquisition search for new opportunities.
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