The exploration drive aims to generate quality targets through cover by working out the relationships of the host mineral phases, size fraction, physicochemical parameters of the samples, landform setting and how they relate to buried mineralisation at local and regional scales.

The Ultrafine+ method delivers multielement analysis, mineralogy and several related parameters derived from the ultrafine fraction of soil samples.

Concentration of gold in the ultrafine fraction gives stronger signals that are generally well above instrumental detection limits, and increased signal-to-background ratios.

With excellent reproducibility smaller samples can be collected, which leads to reduced sampling and transport costs.

The process can be applied to greenfields surveys or, if exploration budgets are small, to historically collected samples.

The technique will be employed as part of Western Gold's soil sampling program that is underway at the Prince Ivan project, an underexplored area of the Joyner's Find greenstone belt in Western Australia.

As part of the soil sampling program Western Gold will collect 2500 soil samples from a 12sq.km area of Prince Ivan, to develop a robust set of measurable parameters and data products.

The UltraFine+ method will be employed to fully assess the soil properties and relationships to the geochemistry, to improve the chances of future discovery.