African Gold enhances resource potential at Blaffo Guetto with latest drill results

African Gold (ASX: A1G) has announced initial results from extension and infill drilling of gold-controlling structures at the Blaffo Guetto prospect within its Didievi project in Côte d’Ivoire.

Assays from the first of six completed diamond drill (DD) holes returned a wide and high-grade intercept of 33 metres grading 2.4 grams per tonne of gold from 31m, hosted within a new quartz porphyry in the southern zone of the deposit.

The result is located outside the maiden inferred resource envelope announced in July, which sits at 4.93 million tonnes for 452,000 ounces of gold at 2.9g/t with a 1g/t cut-off.

New mineralisation

The Blaffo Guetto porphyry is believed to indicate the presence of a new mineralisation type at Didievi, significantly enhancing the prospectivity of the project area and the potential for new gold discoveries.

Gold lodes delineated by previous drilling were preferentially controlled by shear zones cutting the host volcano-sedimentary succession and distributed along the contacts of the intrusive porphyry bodies.

The mineralised porphyries represent new exploration targets mapped by resistivity high anomalies, which could be due to unexposed and undrilled porphyry bodies.

Open-pit suitability

The new results are believed to be consistent with previous exploration at Blaffo Guetto indicating the prospect is high-grade, shallow and potentially suitable for open-pit mining.

The July resource envelope was based on current and historical data from 29 diamond holes for a total of 6,945 metres and 174 reverse circulation holes for 14,923m.

Past drilling has produced strong shallow intercepts including 10m at 123.7g/t gold from 66m including 2m at 613.1g/t and 83.3m at 3.3g/t gold from 166.9m including 18m at 12g/t.

Blaffo Guetto potential

Managing director Phillip Gallagher welcomed the initial results as a reflection of Blaffo Guetto’s potential.

“It is very pleasing to have received such wide and high-grade results from the first hole of the first phase of our Didievi DD program, which is consistent with previous widths and grades at Blaffo Guetto,” he said.

“The first drill hole was approximately 60m away from our inferred resource envelope and will definitely add to the size of the gold resource [and] the discovery of new quartz porphyries in the southern zone of Blaffo Guetto has the potential to be a major new mineral discovery.”

Drilling at the site has recently been completed and samples for the remaining five holes submitted to the laboratory for analysis.