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Premier1 Lithium (ASX:PLC) is fast-tracking plans to drill the high-profile Rochefort gold prospect after a recent survey at the Abbotts North project in Western Australia further highlighted its potential.
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Results from the high-resolution ground gravity survey combined with existing high-resolution magnetics confirmed that gold mineralisation at Rochefort, previously defined by soil and high-grade rock chip sampling, which found the top prospect sits at the intersection of multiple major structures.
Rochefort features a large, coherent gold-in-soil anomaly with peak values up to 30 parts per billion (ppb), while the sampling of high-grade rock chips returned 11.7 grams per tonne (g/t), Premier1 Lithium has now confirmed.
Executive director, Simon Phillips, said maiden drilling at Rochefort is scheduled for Q2 CY26, following structural interpretation and regulatory approvals.
“The high-resolution gravity survey data has provided additional strong support for the prospectivity of the Rocheford target,” the company director said today. “It gives us greater confidence in the structural controls on mineralisation, allowing us to advance rapidly toward drill testing.”
Rochefort was initially identified through geological mapping and rock chip sampling, which returned high-grade results from north-south trending quartz-hematite veins. Follow-up soil sampling defined a coherent 400 metre by 350 metre gold-in-soil anomaly, confirming the prospect’s scale and continuity.
Premier1’s interest in the Western Australian target was boosted by recently received assay results from an Ultrafines orientation survey at Rochefort.
The survey was designed to evaluate the method’s effectiveness in expanding the Rochefort anomaly footprint beneath shallow cover.
Some 51 previously assayed and reported soil samples from the area were re-assayed using Labwest’s Ultrafines. The method reported higher-grade gold in soil across Rochefort, including in areas under cover to the south of the higher-grade anomaly, validating the Ultrafines exploration method.
A peak assay of 42.9 ppb was returned using Ultrafine after it was previously reported at 30 ppb from the standard aqua regia digest assay method.
The prospect is located 20 km north of New Murchison Gold’s 279,000 ounce producing Crown Prince deposit within the same Abbotts Greenstone Belt. Abbotts North is located approximately 35 km north of Meekatharra in Western Australia’s highly endowed Murchison region.
PLC is steady at 1cps today.
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