Apollo Minerals unveils high-grade gold and tungsten samples from newly acquired Aurenere

A week after announcing it was acquiring the Aurenere project in Spain’s north, Apollo Minerals (ASX: AON) has unveiled numerous high-grade gold and tungsten samples from a reconnaissance campaign that was carried out last year.

Rock chips from the campaign returned multiple high-grade gold assays including 33.90 grams per tonne gold and 2.03% tungsten, 26g/t gold and 1.48% tungsten, 20.90g/t gold and 1.38% tungsten.

Higher-grade tungsten was also identified with best tungsten results including 5.49% tungsten, 1.22g/t gold, 3.27 tungsten and 7.33g/t gold, and 3.24% tungsten and 12.05g/t gold.

Aurenere’s owner NeoMetal Spania undertook the campaign in September last year and picked up 68 rock chip samples across a pyrrhotite rich skarn outcrop.

Under the recent agreement, Apollo is purchasing a 75% interest in NeoMetal which wholly-owns the project for an up-front €100,000 (A$161,089). Apollo will pay a further €150,000 (A$241,634) once Aurenere receives the investigation permit.

Once it has the go ahead, Apollo will carry out a surface exploration program at Aurenere to generate new targets and identify extensions to mineralised zones.

Aurenere along strike from Couflens

According to Apollo, Aurenere is along strike and has similar geology to its existing Couflens project in France.

Couflens hosts the historic Salau mine, which was one of the world’s highest-grade tungsten mines and was operated from 1971 to 1986. During its life-span, Salau produced 930,000t of ore grading 1.5% tungsten for 11,500t of tungsten concentrate, with grades increasing in latter years.

Combined, Couflens and Aurenere give Apollo 97 square kilometres of prospective land in the Pyrenees.

Recent field campaigns at Couflens have returned up to 8.25% tungsten and 24.5g/t gold. The company claims the mineralisation is widespread across the project.

Earlier this month, Apollo reported it was securing the remaining 20% interest in Couflens to give the company full upside to any discoveries and resultant operations.

Apollo is investigating the potential of reopening Salau to identify in-mine targets and tungsten, copper and gold mineralisation further afield.

The company believes the gold and copper zones are “largely untapped” and the mineralisation remains open at depth.

In the near-term, Apollo will be focusing on further exploration including developing a JORC-compliant resource at Salau.

Apollo finished today in the green at A$0.30 – up 7.14%.