With drilling underway, Strickland expects to update Shanac’s current 4.63m-ounce gold equivalent resource estimate by the end of this month.
The company anticipates four more drill rigs will soon be available to test a string of targets and build sufficient data at its Gradina target, 1.9 kilometres south south-west of Shanac. Strickland hopes the additional drilling will support a maiden mineral resource estimate to be released towards the end of the year.
The new drilling program is the most extensive undertaken by Strickland and the biggest in Rogozna’s history and will provide a major boost to the project since the company acquired it about eight months ago.
Strickland Metals managing director Paul L’Herpiniere said: “The 2025 exploration program will be the largest ever conducted at the project, with a minimum of 50,000m of drilling designed to continue growing the substantial 6.69Moz AuEq resource base and test a multitude of exciting exploration targets across the project.”
During the company’s tenure it has significantly advanced Rogozna, chalking up some impressive wins including discovering the Shanac skarn gold resource and defining a maiden 1.28m-ounce gold equivalent resource at its Medenovac deposit.
Other notable achievements include the discovery of the Kotlovi orebody, 350m southwest of Medenovac, and defining up-dip extensions of high-grade mineralisation at Gradina. One drill hole at Gradina intersected 48.5m at 3.1g/t gold from 194.4m, including 25.5m at 5.2g/t gold from 216.5m.
The Rogozna project features important geology that gives rise to the significant gold and base metal mineralisation found at the deposit.
It sits in the western part of the 10,000km-long Tethyan Metallogenic Belt. The western part of this belt comprises the Alpine-Balkan-Carpathian-Dinaride province of the Balkans, which includes Serbia.
The overall Tethyan or Alpine-Himalayan orogenic system extends from Morocco in northwest Africa, through western Europe to southern and South East Asia. The globally significant belt is one of the world’s longest metallogenic belts – and potentially its longest.
The Rogozna deposit lies squarely within the western part of the Tethyan Metallogenic Belt, which is globally recognized for its large porphyry-related deposits. Its geological history and tectonic activity directly control the deposit’s mineralisation.
Elements of that tectonism have provided the necessary conditions for the formation of large-scale gold-copper porphyry systems, which are characteristic of this region, and give rise to the deposit’s mineralisation.
As well as its latest drilling program, Stickland is advancing the Rogozna project by continuing metallurgical test work and is due to start an extensive program of baseline environmental studies in the coming weeks. All the developments are designed to support and deliver an initial mining scoping study by the end of the year.
Management sees 2025 as a pivotal year for the Rogozna project and a transformational one for the company.
Strickland remains well-funded to deliver Rogozna’s biggest-ever exploration program, with $33.8 million in cash and Northern Star shares as at the end of the December quarter.
