Novo gets breathing room to look at science behind gold find

One of Novo Resources (CN:NVO) most recent recruits, senior exploration manager Kas De Luca, has been tasked with figuring out exactly how much gold the company is sitting on in the Pilbara, and she is tackling that challenge with the help of science.

Kristie Batten

Novo now has a team of eight looking over the unusual system in the Pilbara

Novo Resources

De Luca joined the company less than two months ago after previously serving as Newcrest Mining's (AU:NCM) Asia Pacific regional exploration manager.As a result, she didn't know that much about conglomerate-hosted gold and she'd taken a "crash course" over the past three weeks."You really don't get a feel for the challenges this nuggetty gold presents until you're standing on the ground," De Luca told the Pilbara Conglomerate Gold Conference in Perth this week.Novo became the darling of the Toronto market after news of the company's nugget finds outside Karratha emerged, soaring in value, attracting a major investment from Kirkland Lake Gold (CN:KL) and sparking a Pilbara gold rush.When the company faced challenges over its sampling methods, some of the heat began to come out of the stock.Novo peaked at C$8.55 (US$6.65) in October, and has fallen by nearly 35% since then (though it is still capitalised at more than $850 million)."I'm actually a bit glad the limelight has come off us because it's given us a chance to ground into the science rather than exploration by metal detector, dare I say it," De Luca said.De Luca admitted Novo still "metal detects pretty much everything" and is reluctant to describe the nuggets being found as watermelon seed-shaped."We really think these are alluvial nuggets," she said."The purity of the gold is quite high."De Luca is working with New Zealand geologist Dr John Youngson, who is an expert in sediment-hosted mineral deposits with a focus on placer, palaeoplacer and seafloor minerals.The mineralisation is being interpreted as being in a near-shore marine alluvial environment.De Luca said gold recovered from the Bering Sea off Alaska looked very similar to the mineralisation at Novo's ground."I know it's a long bow," she admitted.De Luca said there was no doubt that there was gold at Comet Well and Purdy's Reward, saying there was "nuggets everywhere", but the challenge is to work out how much.Initial sampling failed to return accurate results."We definitely clogged up a couple of labs, that's for sure," De Luca said."What we think is that a test plant is the way to go."Novo has secured a test plant from SGS Minerals in Perth and plans to open up multiple trench sites along roughly 2km of strike at Comet Well to collect up to 60 bulk samples of more than five tonnes each."We're wary of saying it's going to be perfect," De Luca said.The first results are due within a month.The company is also diamond drilling to allow 3D modelling of the conglomerates and have built the geological team up to eight.De Luca marvelled at what an unusual system it was."It's not just coarse gold - it's nuggets," she said."We're developing the methodology for mining and sampling as we go."Novo holds more than 9,400 square kilometres of Pilbara ground."We've only worked on a postage stamp of it at the moment," De Luca said."The footprint might be much broader."We're starting to get the science behind it to say this might just be bigger than we thought."For now, I'm still grappling with standing on the ground and wondering where the hell this nugget came from."