After a busy 2021, Kairos Minerals is well-placed - and well-funded - to continue its Pilbara discovery quest next year.
This year, the company completed 17,980m of reverse circulation drilling and 5454m of aircore drilling during the year, as well as taking 13,400 soil samples covering more than 1000 line-kilometres.
Assays are still pending for half of the holes and samples, so strong news flow is expected through to the end of the year and into 2022.
Kairos' flagship project is the Pilbara gold project, south of Port Hedland, which hosts a resource of 20.9 million tonnes at 1.3 grams per tonne gold for 873,500 ounces of gold, mostly contained within the Mt York deposit.
The company has been encouraged by De Grey Mining's 6.8 million ounce maiden Hemi resource, which is just 75km to the north.
The Hemi discovery represented a new style of intrusive gold mineralisation in the Pilbara and earned the De Grey team the prestigious Prospector Award earlier this month.
The 15,000m of infill and extensional drilling completed this year across Kairos' ground is aiming at expanding resources and upgrading the confidence to indicated and measured.
Mt York recently returned a best-ever result of 32m at 3.79gpt gold from 124m, including 16m at 6.62gpt gold, including 4m at 15.7gpt gold.
The resource will underpin a scoping study, bearing in mind that De Grey is planning on building a 10Mt per annum mill nearby.
Kairos also has 2026sq.km of regional Pilbara ground prospective for gold and lithium.
At Kangan, just 20km from Hemi, the company used CSIRO's ultrafine soil sampling technique to refine numerous intrusive-related gold targets, which were followed up with 5545m of aircore drilling.
Further aircore drilling is underway.
Intrusive-related gold potential has also been identified at Skywell, 70km southwest of Hemi, and will be followed up next year.
On the lithium front, a new pegmatite swarm has been discovered at Kangan, while potential has also been identified at Wodgina.
Wodgina is in the right neighbourhood for lithium, sitting between Mineral Resources' and Albemarle Corp's Wodgina mine and Pilbara Minerals' Pilgangoora lithium operation.
While the company's focus is the Pilbara, it also holds the Roe Hills project in WA's Goldfields, which contains over 40km of strike prospective for gold and nickel.
A 3000m RC drilling program has been completed.
Kairos finished the September quarter in a strong financial position with A$5.1 million cash.
Its bank balance will look even better in the new year with $7.1 million set to be received in early January from the exercise of underwritten 2.5c per share options.
