Benz drills bonanza gold at Australia’s Mt Egerton

Benz Mining (ASX: BNZ) has made an ultra-high-grade gold discovery beneath the historical Hibernian mine at Mt Egerton in Western Australia, returning 7 metres grading 223 grams gold per tonne from the new Kilkenny zone.

The highlight intercept is part of a wider intercept in hole 26EGN013 that assayed 11 metres at 144.2 grams gold from 270 metres downhole. The assay marks a repeat of the historical Hibernian ore position at depth with scope for more stacked shoots along the same structural corridor, the company said. Hibernian produced about 7,000 oz. between 1912 to 1924, then operated again as Pegasus from 1937 to 1953, but an exact historical production total remains unclear.

“The mineralization occurs within the predicted dilation position beneath the Hibernian mine, which gives us confidence that the geological model is working,” CEO Mark Lynch-Staunton said in a Tuesday news release.

Mt Egerton, about 800 km north of Perth, marks another brownfield gold project seeking new ounces linked to an old mine, now amped up by record metal prices. Benz sees Mt Egerton as a potential high-grade satellite to its early-stage Glenburgh project, about 170 km away.

Next at Glenburgh, SCP Resource Finance analysts says Benz’s A$94 million treasury should fund a more than 250,000-metre drill campaign this year across Glenburgh’s three main camps – Hurricane, Icon and Thunderbolt – with Thunderbolt offering the strongest discovery upside because historic drilling there stopped at less than 100 metres depth. Drills are to push the Zone 126 deeper and step out across the Icon trend.

Resources

Glenburgh hosts a Joint Ore Reserves Committee-compliant resource from 2024 of 16.3 million tonnes grading 1 gram gold per tonne for 510,100 ounces. Mt Egerton’s initial resource stands at 280,000 tonnes grading 3.1 grams gold for 27,000 oz. of metal, according to a 2024 report.

Benz shares trading in Sydney have increased about 555% over the past 12 months despite closing 5% lower at A$2.73 on Tuesday. It has a market capitalization of A$802 million (C$780.2 million).

Historical camp

The Kilkenny discovery came from a rethink of the field’s structure rather than a simple step-out program, the company said. Reverse circulation drilling last year and early this year targeted the geometry around Hibernian, where Benz concluded the best mineralization formed where oblique shear zones opened space in mafic rocks within a folded gabbro sill.

That model pointed to drilling below the old mine and farther east, where mapped shears intersect the gabbro. The hit in 26EGN013, associated with quartz veining and pyrite, backed the interpretation and strengthened the case for more repeat positions along the belt.

Historical drilling, mainly from pre-Benz campaigns at Mt Egerton and re-reported by Benz in November 2024, had already shown how rich the system can run. Hibernian returned 9 metres at 107.2 grams gold, 5 metres at 96.7 grams and 4 metres at 91.9 grams in earlier work.

Step out potential

Benz also sees room to grow the resource along the trend beyond Hibernian. It has outlined the Galway deposit as another repeat target on the same corridor and a second cluster about 2 km east at Mako, Gift and Trading Post.

Earlier drilling at Gift returned 17 metres at 6.8 grams gold and the company says soils, rock chips and shallow drilling it had taken to date point to a broader gold and base-metal system there.

Mt Egerton covers 179.59 sq. km in the Gascoyne region and includes two granted mining leases. Benz says more than 20 km of prospective strike across the goldfield remains effectively untested and plans to drill Kilkenny extensions, test the eastern targets and continue mapping along the Hibernian corridor.