West Wits Mining has announced plans to start a 17-hole diamond drilling programme at its Bird Reef Central uranium-gold project in Johannesburg, South Africa.
The drilling is targeted to begin by the end of November this year.
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The contracted drilling will cover 5,750m, targeting a 4km strike of the Bird Reef package with holes spaced approximately 250m apart and reaching depths between 100 and 400m.
The staged exploration programme at Bird Reef Central aims to generate data that could support an initial uranium mineral resource estimate and improve the existing gold mineral resource estimate (MRE).
Bird Reef Central currently has a JORC (2012) gold MRE of 1.38 million tonnes at 2.66 grams per tonne, containing 117,600 ounces of gold.
Approximately 65% of these ounces are marked as measured or indicated, and additional drilling is planned to increase confidence levels in the resource, which could underpin a future feasibility study.
Gold and uranium mineralisation occur in adjacent reef horizons within the Bird Reef sequence, allowing both resources to be extracted using shared infrastructure in a standalone operation.
The project area is located within West Wits Mining’s existing Mining Right, which covers gold and uranium extraction.
The company said the drilling programme will be funded from existing cash reserves, with results from each of the three phases expected to be released progressively through the first half of 2027.
Bird Reef Central prospect sits around 4km northwest of West Wits’ Qala Shallows operating gold mine, part of the larger Witwatersrand Basin Project area.
Historical extraction from the broader region has included approximately 37 million pounds of uranium, though the western section of the company’s Mining Right, where Bird Reef Central is located, has not previously been mined.
West Wits CEO and managing director Rudi Deysel said: “Qala Shallows gives us a producing gold foundation; Bird Reef Central gives shareholders a second, independent growth option within the same Mining Right.
“We already hold the rights to mine both gold and uranium at BRC, and we already have a declared gold Mineral Resource there and a uranium Exploration Target.”
In April 2026, the company signed an agreement to sell its Mt Cecelia Project in Western Australia through the complete sale of its subsidiary Northern Reserves to Aventine Resources.
