Mako Gold fast-tracks auger drilling at Korhogo gold project
Mako Gold is using two rigs to speed up a drill sampling program ahead of maiden air core drilling at the West African project.
Mako Gold (ASX: MKG) has kicked off a 7,000m auger drilling sampling program at its Korhogo gold project in Cote d’Ivoire ahead of a larger maiden aircore drilling campaign.
The explorer is fast-tracking the auger program by using two drilling rigs that will work together on each grid in order to send the samples to the lab as soon as the drilling is completed on each grid.
This will speed up the assessment of results by the company in preparation for its 10,000m aircore program, which is planned as soon as the results from the auger drilling is received.
The Korhogo project is made up of the Ouangolodougou and Korhogo Nord permits covering 296sq km and hosting 17km of faulted greenstone granite contact. The project area has no previously recorded exploration.
It lies in the highly prospective Birimian greenstone belt that hosts Barrick Gold’s 4.9-million-ounce Tongon gold mine and montage Gold’s 4.5Moz Kone gold deposit in Cote d’Ivoire, as well as Endeavour’s 2.7Moz Wahgnion gold mine across the border in Burkina Faso.
“We started work on the project in 2021 with an airborne geophysical program as well as a geochemical soil sampling program, which identified highly prospective targets which we will now be testing with auger drilling,” Mako managing director Peter Ledwidge said.
Mako has highlighted the significantly larger size of its auger grids and the strike length of the soil anomalies on the Ouangolodougou and Korhogo Nord permits compared to the footprint of the nearby Tongon gold mine.
“This bolsters the company’s confidence that the Korhogo permits could host large gold deposits,” it stated.
Drilling continues at Napié ahead of resource estimate
Mako continues to view its flagship Napié project, also in Cote d’Ivoire, as its core focus. Here, an extensional drilling campaign is ongoing with a maiden mineral resource estimate scheduled for the second quarter of the 2022 calendar year.
Mr Ledwidge confirmed the company is fully financed to advance both its “exciting new greenfield program” at Korhogo as well as the Napié project.
While Mako holds 100% of the Korhogo permits, it currently owns a 51% interest in Napié in joint venture with a subsidiary of gold miner Perseus Mining (ASX: PRU). However, last year it entered into a binding agreement to consolidate ownership from 51% to 90%.