Aurum Resources reports high-grade gold intercepts at Boundiali project’s BD Target 2

Aurum Resources’ (ASX: AUE) Boundiali project in Côte d’Ivoire continues to provide exploration success for the company, with recent drilling intersecting further shallow, wide gold intercepts.

Diamond drilling (DD) at BD Target 2 has reported multiple hits including 74 metres at 1.00 grams per tonne from 167m and 33m at 0.84g/t from 192m.

The drilling programme at BD Target 2 is testing a 1.7 kilometre by 1km gold prospect with a history of artisanal workings.

Boundiali acquisition

Aurum opened the Côte d’Ivoire chapter of its story when it entered into a binding heads of agreement to acquire specialist West African drilling company PlusOr Global and its interest in the highly prospective Boundiali gold project in mid-November 2023.

Initially using two self-owned DD rigs and around 10,000m of consumables that came with the acquisition, Aurum has continued to move quickly with its exploration aspirations, recently adding a third rig.

With all three rigs in operation, Aurum is drilling around 4,000m per month and plans to accelerate that even further to approximately 6,000m per month by adding a fourth diamond drill rig.

Maiden MRE

The company’s current aim is to release an initial mineral resource estimate (MRE) for Boundiali in late CY2024.

“We are very pleased to see that BD Target 2 is shaping up nicely, with good, wide intercepts from 100m line spacing diamond holes confirming that the gold system is open along strike and continues at depth,” said managing director Dr Caigen Wang.

“These new shallow, wide gold intercepts prove the gold system continues in fresh rock underneath shallow oxide reverse circulation drilling (30 holes for 2,057m) drilled by previous explorers.”

Follow-up work

The company is already planning to undertake follow-up drilling to chase the system along strike and at depth, as well as in areas where its exploration team has identified artisanal workings.

BD Target 2 is located about 6km to the north of BD Target 1, where Aurum previously intercepted 73m at 2.15g/t gold from 172m.

BD Targets 1 and 2 sit within a 13km by 3km gold mineralised corridor, the majority of which has not yet been tested by drilling.

“We are well-funded and supported by our shareholders and […] given the encouraging results to date, we are confident in adding new targets on the BD and BM tenements while we drill towards our target of delivering inaugural JORC resources for the Boundiali project by late 2024,” Dr Wang said.

Gold mineralisation remains open along strike and at depth on all prospects, with drilling ongoing and further work being planned.

Multiple targets

Multiple gold targets remain to be drill tested in the BM tenement that have been defined from extensive gold in soil anomalism and artisanal pits associated with a north-south trend of metasediments and granites.

In the south, on the western margin of the permit, there appears to be a sheared and cut-up granite with metasediments wrapping around the ellipsoidal granitic, which structurally is an exciting target zone that is yet to be evaluated.