Altair Minerals drill capacity increases 8,000m per month
- Maiden reverse circulation drilling has started across the South Oko and North Peters Project areas, expanding the total active fleet to three drill rigs.
- Shares in Altair Minerals were up 3.92% following the operational release.
- The expanded fleet underpins the target drilling rate of approximately 8,000m per month by October across the Greater Oko tenure.
Altair Minerals (ASX:ALR) has initiated maiden reverse circulation drilling across its South Oko and North Peters prospects, increasing its operational footprint to three active drill rigs.
The additional equipment represents a step-change from earlier exploration phases when activity was limited to surface trenching and single-rig sampling operations.
The company stated that the new drilling programme follows maiden trenching results at South Oko, where all six deep trenches intersected gold mineralisation, including a key interval of 10m at 10.15 grammes per tonne of gold.
Altair Minerals CEO Faheem Ahmed commented, "Three rigs are now operating; a potential fourth rig at SOKO is also anticipated; drilling throughput is scaling rapidly; and the cadence of results should increase accordingly."
Under the current plan, Phase 1 reverse circulation drilling at South Oko will concentrate on the W1 target to deliver rapid, systematic, first-pass coverage across the regional structure.
The company aims to ramp up its drilling throughput across Greater Oko to approximately 8,000m per month by October.
Following the announcement, the Altair Minerals share price was up at $0.053.
The South Oko prospect covers approximately 14 km of the Oko Shear Contact, which hosts multiple gold discoveries to the north totalling 6.4 million ounces of gold at an average grade of 2.5 grammes per tonne.
The broader Greater Oko Project forms part of the explorer's strategy to systematically test shear-hosted geochemical anomalies using initial reverse circulation drilling followed by deeper diamond drilling.
