Gold shines brightly at Bella Tondi for Vital Metals
Diamond drilling at the Bella Tondi prospect, part of the Bouli gold project in Niger, West Africa.
Vital Metals (ASX: VML) has drilled out visible gold from below a 157 grams per tonne gold hole in an emerging high-grade gold zone at its Bella Tondi prospect located at its Bouli gold project in Niger, West Africa.
Pictures of the core sample from below the hole reported to market back in March 2018 showed glistening gold shining through other core sample material.
Assay results from the shiny gold sample are currently pending.
Vital Metals managing director Mark Strizek said when he saw the visible gold shining from the core he understood why more than 20,000 artisanal miners had chased high-grade gold at Bella Tondi in 2016.
“Core from BTRD004 has delivered a beautiful specimen of visible gold,” he said.
“The hole was drilled under the ultra-high-grade four metres of 157g/t gold intercept and is located in the emerging high-grade southern zone at Bella Tondi which appears to extend for at least 200 metres.”
Vital Metals has drilled three diamond-tail holes of its eight-hole program, with samples with an Ouagadougou team for assay by about June 2018.
“The upside at the Bouli project looks fantastic with high-grade gold at Bella Tondi, and our new aeromagnetic data looks to have opened a veritable Aladdin’s cave of targets with the new structural interpretation identifying more than 20 targets having a combined strike length of over 20km,” company leader Mr Strizek said.
Next steps
Deeper drilling of the next five holes will continue, to drill a total of about 1800m, and to vertical depth of 15m.
The next five assay results are tipped to come back about six to eight weeks after the June batch.
Vital Metals plans complete the diamond program at Bella Tondi then undertake further exploration to test the depth and strike potential of high-grade shoots.
Other findings
Xcalibur Airborne Geophysics carried out an airborne geomagnetics program at the site this year, travelling a 9060-kilometre line length with general 100m line spacing over the tenement package and 50m infill spacing above the Bella Tondi trend.
The team completed its contracted activities in April, with Perth-based Southern Geoscience Consultants then processed and interpreting the geomagnetics data.
Cyanide leach analysis conducted out of Ouagadougou of 50 reverse-circulation chip samples to test the leachability of the Bella Tondi gold mineralisation found what a good correlation between the original fire assay and cyanide leach assay called “a good correlation between the original fire assay and cyanide leach assay”.
The A$13.19 million company is planning further metallurgical testing and said it did not know whether the material was “representative of all mineralised material types found at Bella Tondi”.
Securities in Vital Metals were up 12.5% to A$0.09 by mid-afternoon.