High-Grade Visible Gold In Quartz Reef At Big River South

Siren Gold Limited (ASX: SNG) (Siren or the Company) is pleased to announce and update on the Big River South Gold Project in New Zealand.

Highlights

• Soil geochemistry has identified a large untested 3km long gold anomaly at Big River South extending from the Big River mine area.
• Recent rock chip sampling at Big River South confirms high grade gold mineralisation with visible gold evident at the St George target.
• Sampling of the quartz reef in Level 1 of the historic St George mine, returned grades up to 144.0g/t Au, with an average grade of 30.7g/t Au.
• Historically a 1m thick reef was mined to 30m below the surface with an average grade of 72g/t Au.
• The Big River South area has had minimal modern exploration to date with the Big River South reefs extending over 3km and remains largely untested.

Background

The Big River project (comprised of Exploration Permit 60448) is located ~15 kms SE of Reefton (Figure 5). The project overlays the areas of the historic Big River Mine that produced ~136,000 oz of gold at an average recovered grade of 34g/t between 1880 and 1942.

The Big River gold project consists of 6 identified gold mineralised shoots across more than 500m of strike, with potential to discover additional high-grade shoots. Siren has previously announced (refer ASX Announcement of 24 April 2023) a Maiden Inferred resource of 105koz at 3.94g/t Au defined from 2 of these 6 shoots (A2 Shoot and Shoot 4) within Siren’s Global Mineral Resource Estimate of 1.2Moz @ 3.1g/t Au (Table 2).

The Big River deposit remains open in all directions, with significant potential for increased gold resources from additional exploration drilling.

Soil geochemistry has been completed for over 6kms, from Big River North to around 2kms south of St George. The gold soil geochemistry shows large anomalies at Big River mine and a 3km long anomaly from Golden Hill to south of St George (Figure 1). The results clearly show that the gold anomaly continues strongly to the south until it is cut off by younger granite and extends into a broad zone south of St George into an area that has not been historically mined.

St George is located 1.6kms south of the Big River mine and 4kms east of the historic Blackwater mine (Figure 2) that produced 740koz at an average grade of 14.2g/t Au from the Birthday Reef². The Blackwater mine closed in 1951 when the shaft collapsed, and the mine flooded. Federation Mining Limited have developed a 3.2km decline to intercept the Birthday Reef 750m below the surface, where the Blackwater mine ended in 1951. Federation plan to extract an additional 700koz of gold down to approximately 1,500m below the surface with first production forecast for late 2024³.

• Resource drilling from underground is currently in progress.

The Big River South area comprises the Golden Hill, Big River South and St George historic mine areas. In the historic Golden Hill claim a 0.6m to 2m wide reef was found in the late 1800’s. The quartz reef was traced in a serious of trenches over a strike length of 900m. A 55m long drive was developed on the northern section of the reef that averaged 0.5m thick and 39 tons were mined and crushed for an average grade of 7g/t Au. This was considered sub-economic at the time and no further exploration was completed.

Big River South was discovered in 1908 when a 45m long reef 1.5m wide with visible gold was estimated grade between 23 and 32 g/t Au, with similarities to the nearby Blackwater Reef. Good reef was intersected in exploration drives which pinched and swelled. On one level a 100m long gold reef was found but no further work was done to prove its extent or worth and the Reefton South claim was never worked after 1925.

St George, just to the south of Big River South, was found after serval gold bearing outcrops were found in the 1890’s. An early 30m drive was completed on a 1m reef containing quartz and black pug with very encouraging results, with 30 tons recovered returning 70 ounces of gold (72 g/t Au). Three further reefs were discovered where 16 tons were won recovering 37 ounces of gold (72 g/t Au). The reefs were found to pinch and swell and again development was hampered by lack of funding. The claim was abandoned until 1910 when an ambitious plan was to drive a low-level tunnel from Snowy River. In 1910 a 571m long tunnel was driven north from the Snowy River. Several small gold reefs or quartz boulders were intersected along the drive, but none were developed. The war in 1914 stopped any further exploration.

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