GEO Exploration (AIM:GEO), the AIM-listed explorer advancing gold and hydrocarbon projects across Australia, Africa and the Mediterranean, said it has won grants under the Western Australian Government's Co-Funded Exploration Drilling Programme, Round 34, at both its Gorge and Juno gold projects.
At Gorge, GEO applied to test the Gorge Mine and MAG001 targets with a seven-hole diamond drilling programme totalling 1,200 metres, and has been awarded A$180,000 toward direct drilling costs.
The Gorge licence, held 100% through subsidiary Gorge Gold Pty, covers 81 square kilometres roughly 110 km west of Paraburdoo, where historical sampling has returned rock chips up to 134 g/t gold and soils up to 233 g/t gold across a roughly 5 km mineralised corridor.
The co-funding scheme, run by the Department of Energy, Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety through the Geological Survey of Western Australia, shares drilling costs to test exploration concepts in greenfield and underexplored areas.
MAG001 is a magnetic anomaly identified during GEO's airborne survey programme earlier this year, carrying an amplitude of roughly 400 nT and a modelled depth-to-top of about 300 metres, coincident with a LiDAR feature and surface iron-oxide staining.
At Juno, where GEO holds an 80% interest, the company applied to test the JUD003 target with a single diamond hole to a planned depth of 650 metres, and has secured A$100,000 toward that programme.
Both grants must be used by October 2027, though GEO said it intends to carry out the drilling in the first half of 2027, subject to operational arrangements and regulatory approvals.
Tom Harris, GEO's Exploration Manager, said he was "delighted" with the grant awards and thanked Dr Finbar Murphy and Callum Baxter for their work preparing the applications. Meanwhile, Hamza Choudhry, GEO's Chief Financial Officer, said the awards "align with our disciplined approach to capital allocation, with a continued focus on directing resources towards advancing GEO's exploration projects."
The grants follow a run of exploration work at Gorge this year, including airborne magnetic and radiometric surveys, field reconnaissance confirming visible gold in quartz vein samples, and a trial soil geochemistry survey that returned a peak assay of 7.74 g/t gold at the Gorge Mine target in August.
