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 key outcome over the last twelve months has been the decision to develop the King of the Hills gold project at Leonora, which is expected to produce at the rate of 65,000 ounces per annum over 3.5 years from the June quarter of 2011. Mineralisation at the King of th Hills project remains open down-plunge. The Tower Hill deposit near Leonora and the Nevoria 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 landbank 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 acquistion search for new opportunities.
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