In June, Platina Resources Ltd will conduct back-to-back follow-up aircore (AC) drilling programs at its wholly-owned Challa and Beete gold projects in its home state of Western Australia.

At Challa, which covers 293 square kilometres and sits 55km east of Mount Magnet in WA’s Murchison, 1690 metres in 14 closely-spaced AC holes will be drilled as part of a third phase field program.

They will test for a strike extension of the first greenfield gold intersection of 12m at 0.66 grams per tonne from 100m (including 4m at 1.7g/t from 100m) along the north west trending splay of the craton scale Challa shear, which sits within the western section of the Windimurra igneous intrusive complex.

Ultimately, this drilling aims to target the extent of the known mineralisation and test the current geological interpretation before the junior carries out any further work at the target.

Meanwhile at the 139km² Beete project, located around 50km south east of the high grade gold mining centre of Norseman in the Goldfields-Esperance region, 1536m across 39 AC holes is set to be drilled as a part of a second phase follow up infill program to test for larger and more prominent mineralised signatures in areas that returned anomalous values of gold and arsenic in the project’s initial field program.

According to the ASX-listed Platina, drilling in 2024 achieved an average depth of only 30m, hence, infill work was now required to achieve better resolution of the anomalous zones discovered during the first phase.

Earlier holes were spaced at 320m and 640m between lines. The current planned program will step out to 20 and 40m on either side of these anomalies.

The ASX-listed Platina is also continuing to develop its Xanadu project, which sits some 38km southeast of the iron ore town of Paraburdoo in WA’s Pilbara within the Neerambah area that lies near the northeast margin of the Ashburton Fold Belt of the Capricorn Orogeny.

The tenements cover a portion of the northern-central margin of the Ashburton Basin, flanking the southern margin of the Pilbara Craton and the southern margin of the Hamersley Basin.

The area of tenure predominantly overlies stratigraphy of the Lower Proterozoic Wyloo Group (Beasley River Quartzite, Cheela Springs Basalt, the Mount McGrath Formation, Duck Creek Dolomite and the Ashburton Formation).

Furthermore, the Wyloo Group unconformably overlies the Mount Bruce Supergroup (Turee Creek Group, Hamersley Group and Fortescue Group) with the contact between the two groups considered to be tectonic (at least in part).

Platina managing director Corey Nolan said the AC programs were designed to follow up promising gold intersections and anomalies from previous drilling campaigns.

Meanwhile, the company will focus on shallower oxide drilling at Xanadu after its WA Labor government-funded Exploration Incentive Scheme (EIS) 380m deep diamond hole, Cleopatra, which was drilled in February, failed to intersect mineralisation in the deeper geophysical target.

Encouragingly, though, a shallower gold intersection of 16.1m at 0.2g/t from 202m was returned, suggesting a larger mineralised target could be deeper and further to the south.

A large blanket of oxide mineralisation extends over 10km at Xanadu West and includes previous mining and heap leach operations at Amphitheatre.

There, the junior said at the end of May, there was potential for a lot of gold within the system, meaning further assessment was required to better understand the controls on the deeper mineralisation.

Platina was awarded $54,750 to fund up to 50 per cent of the direct drilling costs as part of the EIS grant from the state in November 2024.