Horizon listed in December following a A$15 million initial public offering after owner Panoramic decided its gold division would be better as a standalone entity.

Horizon manager projects Tim Mason told the RIU Sydney Resources Round-up last week that the Gum Creek project had always sat within companies that had a different primary focus.

“As a result, it’s been a bit of a sleeper,” he said.

“It deserves its own focus.”

The Gum Creek project has a resource of 17 million tonnes at 2.25 grams per tonne gold for 1.25 million ounces of gold.

A scoping study completed by Panoramic indicated a viable development scenario, but Horizon will focus on resource extension drilling and regional exploration in conjunction with new studies.

Drilling started last month, with assays due for extensional drilling at Heron South.

The company also compiled a database of all historical production and exploration, which had never been done before.

“This is where it gets exciting,” Mason said.

The work returned 14 new geophysical targets along the Wilsons Shear. Only 14km of the 70km strike length had been covered by detailed induced polarisation surveying previously.

“We ran IP on it – it shone out like a Christmas tree,” Mason said.

“They’re not particularly deep either.”

The IP anomalies show similar chargeability to the nearby Wilsons deposit, which has a resource of 2.27Mt at 5.37 grams per tonne for 391,500 ounces of gold.

“The problem we’ve got with Wilsons is that it’s 400,000oz, but we need a little bit more,” Mason said.

“If we can find a little bit more, it’ll be game on for us.”

The company is also conducting studies into the processing of refractory ore.

“We can add value by incorporating the refractory into the mine plan,” Mason said.

“Lots of people have pooh-poohed refractory, but there have been a lot of successful refractory operations and every orebody is different.”

Horizon had cash of $12.5 million at the end of March.

Shares in Horizon remain at 32c, below its 40c IPO price.