Kali Metals Hits 10.8 g/t Gold at Marble Bar as Four New Prospects Emerge
Key Takeaways
- Diamond drilling at Marble Bar returned 2.6m @ 10.8 g/t Au from just 8.7m depth, confirming high-grade gold in the shallow zone and validating the earlier RC drilling programme.
- Phase II comprised 4,059m of RC drilling across 129 holes and 282m of diamond drilling across 16 holes, confirming gold mineralisation across a 3km cumulative strike length at four prospects.
- Gold mineralisation has only been tested to approximately 50m vertical depth, leaving the down-dip extension entirely open for future drilling.
- Four newly discovered prospects — Stug, Vickers, Pershing, and Chiha — were announced on 21 July 2026, with Stug returning rock-chip grades of up to 53.1 g/t Au across a 250m mapped strike length.
- A six-month exploration roadmap is underway, culminating in a conditional Mineral Resource Estimate and a Mining Licence application — marking the transition from pure exploration toward early development.
Diamond drilling confirms high-grade gold at Marble Bar
Kali Metals has released final assay results from its Phase II drilling programme at the Marble Bar Gold Project in Western Australia’s Pilbara region, confirming the discovery of an outcropping, shallow-dipping gold system along a 3km cumulative strike length.
Phase II comprised 4,059m of Reverse Circulation (RC) drilling across 129 holes and 282m of diamond drilling (DD) across 16 holes. The programme was designed to test gold mineralisation at higher density than Phase I, closing line spacing to approximately 40–60m over selected areas.
The headline result is a diamond drill intersection of 2.6m @ 10.8 g/t Au from 8.7m — a grade that signals genuine high-quality mineralisation in the shallow zone, and one that carries particular weight given the method used to obtain it.
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Phase II results at a glance
The standout intersections from both DD and RC drilling are summarised below. RC results from down-dip extension testing were previously reported.
The 10.8 g/t result from MBDD004 sits within a broader pattern of high-grade intercepts at this project; earlier work returning 19.2 g/t high-grade gold at Marble Bar established the grade potential that Phase II drilling has now confirmed across multiple prospects.
| Hole ID | Result | Depth From |
|---|---|---|
| MBDD004 | 2.6m @ 10.8 g/t Au | 8.7m |
| MBDD002 | 1.8m @ 7.4 g/t Au | 0m |
| MBDD003 | 3.9m @ 1.7 g/t Au | 0m |
| MBRC081 | 3m @ 3.4 g/t Au | 41m |
| MBRC082 | 5m @ 1.0 g/t Au | 41m |
| MBRC110 | 1m @ 9.4 g/t Au | 21m |
Current drill spacing over the four main gold prospects sits at lines of 40–60m, with drillholes at 10–20m spacing in the outcropping zone and 30–50m in the down-dip extension. Critically, gold mineralisation has only been tested to approximately 50m vertical depth — meaning the system remains open at depth.
What is RC and diamond drilling — and why does it matter?
If you’re not familiar with exploration drilling, the distinction between these two methods matters for how you interpret the results.
RC drilling is faster and lower cost. It works by forcing compressed air through drill rods to push rock chips back to the surface, where they’re collected and sampled. It’s the workhorse of early-stage exploration — ideal for testing large areas quickly.
Diamond drilling is a different proposition. A rotating drill bit embedded with industrial diamonds cuts a continuous cylinder of intact rock, called a core, which is extracted and split for sampling. This produces far higher-quality geological information and confirms what RC results suggested at the sample level.
At Marble Bar, the DD programme was designed specifically to test the down-dip extension of mineralisation and provide more detailed information on the vein system. Returning >10 g/t Au in diamond core is a meaningful result. It validates the RC work done previously and provides core material that can be used for future metallurgical studies — the kind of technical work required as a project advances toward a resource estimate.
Results confirming down-dip gold at Tiger II were among the RC intersections previously reported, and the diamond drilling programme was subsequently designed to test whether that mineralisation extended with consistent grade into the sub-surface.
Four prospects confirmed — and a growing pipeline beyond them
Phase II drilling tested gold mineralisation across four main prospects: Sherman, Tiger, Tiger 2, and Churchill. The gold is hosted within quartz veining in strongly potassic-altered granitoid units (specifically the Jenkin Granodiorite and Fig Tree Gneiss), within the south-eastern quadrant of the Mt Edgar Intrusive Complex.
What makes the Marble Bar story more compelling right now is that these four confirmed prospects are no longer the full picture. On 21 July 2026, Kali announced four newly discovered prospects: Stug, Vickers, Pershing, and Chiha. A follow-up drilling programme is currently being designed to test these targets.
The Stug Prospect stands out among the newcomers. The mapped strike length of quartz vein at Stug is 250m, with a mapped surface width of 5–30m. Rock-chip sampling has returned grades of 3.9–53.1 g/t Au. Separately, recently completed soil sampling has generated numerous targets for ground-truthing across the broader project area.
Managing Director Paul Adams framed the significance of where the project now sits:
Paul Adams, Managing Director, Kali Metals
“Diamond drilling has returned high-grade results exceeding 10 g/t Au in the shallow zone, strengthening our confidence in the Marble Bar gold system. We are also continuing to identify new high-grade mineralised outcrops, while the recently completed soil sampling has generated numerous targets for ground-truthing and potential new discoveries…”
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What’s next for Marble Bar — six-month exploration roadmap
The company has outlined a defined exploration strategy for the next six months focused on expanding the mineralisation footprint and advancing internal studies. The planned activities are:
- Completion of a high-resolution (2m resolution) hyperspectral survey over the entire Pilbara tenement package — currently in progress, expected to complete within 1–2 months
- Extended geological mapping at the newly discovered Stug, Vickers, Pershing, and Chiha prospects
- Initial reconnaissance mapping and rock-chip sampling over new gold-in-soil anomalies
- Additional heritage and environmental surveys over newly identified prospects
- RC drilling of extensional zones
- A Mineral Resource Estimate (MRE) — conditional on successful exploration
- Application for a Mining Licence
The MRE and Mining Licence application represent meaningful step-changes in project maturity — the transition from pure exploration into early development-stage territory. That progression is what drives value inflection for investors in discovery-stage stories.
Keep in mind that mineralisation has only been tested to approximately 50m vertical depth. The down-dip extension is open. With four confirmed prospects, four newly discovered targets, high-grade DD results in hand, and a structured roadmap toward a conditional MRE, the Marble Bar system is actively expanding rather than approaching a ceiling.
Ready to Explore the Full Investment Case for Kali Metals’ Marble Bar Gold Project?
With diamond drilling confirming grades exceeding 10 g/t Au in shallow zones across a 3km strike length, and four newly discovered prospects now added to an already expanding pipeline, the Marble Bar Gold Project is at a compelling inflection point for discovery-stage investors.
Explore the Kali Metals project profile on Discovery Alert to review the full drilling results, prospect pipeline, and six-month exploration roadmap as the company advances toward a conditional Mineral Resource Estimate.