African Aura Mining (LON:AAAM, TSX-V:AUR) this morning unveiled some encouraging early results from its Ndablama prospect in western Liberia, which it says has “all the hallmarks of being a significant gold system”.
Results from the first eight holes include an eight metre intersection with 6.04 grams of the precious metal per tonne and 16 metres at 2.38 grams.
Results from the final seven-hole, 2,500 metre drill programme are expected at some point in this quarter, African Aura confirmed. Phase two will include ground geophysics as well as further drilling and trenching.
Soil sampling data from the current round of work, meanwhile, reveal the gold anomaly at Ndablama could be as long as two kilometres.
Ndablama is near the company’s 1.5 million ounce New Liberty gold mine and shares some of its characteristics, including similar geology.
Chief executive Luis da Silva said: “We are very encouraged by these early stage drilling and trenching results from the Ndablama gold prospect.”
African Aura is planning to split into one iron ore and one gold company that could see the asset base re-rate, and in November it raised £20.3 million, or US$32 million, to fund the two operations.
It now has USS$39 million in cash and around US$28 million has already been earmarked to fund work programmes across both businesses.
David Reading will be the chief executive of Aureus Mining, the gold spin out company from African Aura.
He said of the Ndablama results today: "As we move New Liberty towards production, with a target of 100,000oz of gold per year, the proximal exploration targets of Ndablama, Weaju, Silver Hills and Gondoja demonstrate the highly prospective nature of the Archaean geology within our mining licence, which remains unexplored due to historical reasons.
“The company believes that there is considerable opportunity to expand the current resource base.
“Following on from our fund raising last year we are in the process of negotiating contracts for geophysical and diamond drilling programmes which will cover our priority gold targets as well as potential extensions to the New Liberty deposit."
It has been a busy week for African Aura which on Tuesday revealed its Nkout project in southern Cameroon is potentially world class.
Independent consultants SRK have assigned a 43-101 maiden resource estimate on the project of 1.04 billion tonnes of iron ore at a grade of 34 per cent in the inferred category.
However the management believes there may be the headroom to increase the resource base to 4 billion tonnes by targeting the wider Nkout area.
The current estimate covers just a three kilometre section of a 20 kilometre-long anomaly.
Chief da Silva said earlier this week: "This is an excellent maiden resource achieved for the first three kilometres of the Nkout deposit and with the recently announced excellent metallurgical results, testifies to the world class potential of the project.
“Aggressive expansion of the resource base by drilling along strike both east and west of Nkout Centre is underway.
“The project will undoubtedly form a major part in the development of the regional iron ore infrastructure which has yet to be built.”