Ironridge Resources Limited (LON:IRR) shares rose on Wednesday as the firm hailed 'exceptional' assay results from first drilling at the Zaranou gold project in the Ivory Coast.
In a shallow drilling programme, the junior hit grades as high as 23 grammes per tonne (g/t) of gold, while one hole showed gold at 3.39 g/t over a width of 22 metres (m).
Len Kolff, Ironridge's chief operating officer said: "Assay results received to date are exceptional for a first-pass exploration drill programme and indicate potential for a significant gold discovery, notwithstanding that only such a small portion of the large target footprint has been drill tested to date."
Zaranou is on the border with Ghana and along strike from operating gold mines at Chirano (5mln ounces), Bibiani (5.5mln ounces) and Ahafo (17mln ounces).
All the drill intersections are open and down-dip and improved on channel and rock-chip sampling results from an 8 kilometre (km) long target zone where there has already been intensive artisanal mining, the group said.
"Fieldwork to date has identified over 8km strike length and up to 1.2km width of coincident hard-rock artisanal workings, surface sampling results up to 69.6g/t gold and geophysical anomalies which remains open along strike and has now been drilled along broad spaced AC traverses with initial exceptional results up to 6m @ 15.11g/t and 22m @ 3.39g/t gold,” Kolff added.
Ironridge shares jumped 15.3% higher to 12.25p.