Blackham Resources Ltd (ASX:BLK) will release an update on its funding arrangements and has been granted a trading halt by the ASX.

This halt will remain in place until the start of normal trading on Friday, March 15, 2019, or when the announcement is released to the market, whichever occurs earliest.

READ: Blackham Resources confirms high-grade gold shoot at Williamson

The gold producer last week confirmed a new high-grade gold shoot along strike from existing reserves at the Williamson project in Western Australia.

Williamson is 18 kilometres south of Blackham’s Wiluna gold plant and is an historical open pit mine that is filled with brine solution.

Pit being dewatered

Through a deal with Salt Lake Potash Ltd (ASX:SO4), the pit is being dewatered to enable it to extract a resource from the brine while Blackham expects to be able to mine in the open pit from August 2019.

The Williamson pit expansion contains a probable reserve of 950,000 tonnes at 2.2 g/t gold for 68,000 ounces.

Blackham’s latest results confirm wider mineralisation zones than the current resource model within and below the pit design and a new resource will be estimated in the coming months.

The Williamson pit produced over 40,000 ounces at 2.0 g/t gold from two years of mining in 2005-6.

READ: Blackham Resources locks in gold sales at A$1,836 per ounce

Blackham also recently capitalised on the strength in the Australian dollar gold price to expand its gold price protection at near record prices.

An additional 20,000 ounces of production has been hedged at a forward price of A$1,836 per ounce.

Blackham’s revised gold forward sales contracts position is for the delivery of 38,123 ounces at an average price of A$1,773 per ounce over the next 10 months.

This represents about six months of gold production price protection.