Marmota extends known gold mineralisation at NW flank discovery
Drilling at Marmota’s NW flank returned up to 4m at 28g/t gold.
Marmota (ASX: MEU) has extended the known mineralisation along the NW flank of its Aurora Tank gold project in South Australia.
Prior to the latest drilling campaign, the NW flank extended 95m in a north-east direction, with latest results doubling that flank to over 190m, with mineralisation remaining open along strike.
Better results from the latest assays were 8m at 16 grams per tonne gold, including 4m at 28g/t gold; and 12m at 5g/t gold, including 4m at 10g/t gold.
“This program has primarily been an extensional program to test out new ground,” Marmota chairman Dr Colin Rose said.
He added it was also the company’s 7th drilling campaign to be carried out at Aurora Tank – yielding some of the highest-grade intersections.
“I find this particularly pleasing given that these results have been obtained in an extensional zone.”
“Aurora Tanks keeps on growing. The underlying fundamentals keep on improving, and so too the potential rewards to our shareholders,” Dr Rose said.
Advancing Aurora Tank
The phase two drilling campaign kicked off in December last year and was completed at the end of January.
The program comprised 84-holes for 7,228m with an average depth of 86m.
In addition to the NW flank, Marmota noted gold had been intersected in 12 holes at the Two Fingers zone, with several 4m intervals assaying above 1g/t gold.
Meanwhile, drilling at the project’s main zone returned 4m at 8.7g/t gold and 4m at 3.4g/t gold.
These latest assays follow on from earlier results that included 4m at 24g/t gold at the NW flank.
Metallurgical test work during the December quarter involved column leaching that resulted in “excellent” gold recoveries of 83%.
The heap leach processing method would mean Marmota would not need to construct a mill or pursue a toll treatment option that would result in higher costs.
According to Aurora, the mineralisation’s metallurgy is amenable to a low cost and low capital expenditure operation.
Aurora Tank is 50km north-east of recently delisted WPG Resources’ Challenger gold mine.