Mining

Marvel Gold grows Tabakorole potential with soil sampling results, graphite spin-out progresses

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By Lorna Nicholas - 
Marvel Gold ASX MVL Tabakorole Mali Altus Strategies

Marvel董事总经理Phil Hoskins表示,公司专注于在Tabakorole建立一个数百万盎司的资源。

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Marvel Gold (ASX: MVL) has firmed up a number of drill ready targets with similar characteristics to the flagship deposit at its Tabakorole gold project in southern Mali.

The 392sq km project is owned via two separate joint ventures – Oklo where Marvel holds 80%, and Altus Strategies, in which Marvel possesses 51%.

Marvel recently collected 4,267 soil samples and undertook 5,300-line km of high-resolution ground magnetics across the broader Tabakorole structural corridor.

The soil samples underwent fire assay for gold and ultra-low detection 48-element analysis to identify pathfinder anomalies.

As well as gold, Tabakorole mineralisation is known to contain signature pathfinder elements arsenic, tungsten and tellurium.

This soil sampling campaign was completed in addition to drilling that kicked off late last year and is continuing.

Marvel managing director Phil Hoskins said the company was proud to have carried out such an extensive regional exploration program during its first field season at Tabakorole.

“We already have a large and growing resource at Tabakorole – expected to exceed 1 million ounces when upgraded following this season’s drilling.”

“We recognised, however, that the continued growth of the project would come from additional gold discoveries, an outcome we were confident of achieving with the project being located in a prospective structural setting proximal to the Bannifin shear zone.”

Mr Hoskins said the latest soil sampling results reinforce the project’s prospectivity with numerous targets identified across the landholding including several Tabakorole “lookalike” signatures.

“The high-resolution ground magnetics provides the structural data to deliver robust targets and increased confidence in making new discoveries,” Mr Hoskins added.

Advancing Tabakorole

The current resource for Tabakorole totals 23.9 million tonnes at 1.2 grams per tonne gold for 910,000 ounces of contained metal.

When the 2020-2021 field season at Tabakorole winds up in August, Marvel expects to have completed about 9,000m of reverse circulation and diamond drilling.

An updated resource is scheduled to be release close to the end of the September quarter, with Marvel targeting in excess of 1Moz.

The resource will be underpinned with drill results such as 40m at 1g/t gold from 86m, including 7m at 2.2g/t gold from 86m; and 33m at 1.1g/t gold from 84m, including 10m at 2.3g/t gold.

Assays are pending for 2,100m of diamond core out of a planned 3,000m drilling campaign.

Meanwhile, the targets generated from the soil geochemistry and geophysics programs will be followed with mapping and rock chip sampling.

Drilling of these targets is anticipated to begin in the December quarter.

Graphite spin-off

As well as Tabakorole, Marvel owns the construction-ready Chilalo graphite project in southeast Tanzania.

The project is fully permitted and described as a world class asset, with expenditure on the project exceeding $21 million.

Earlier this year in May, Marvel announced plans to spin-out the project into a new company that would complete an initial public offering (IPO) and seek a listing on the ASX.

It’s proposed Chilalo will be spun-out into a wholly-owned subsidiary named Evolution Energy Minerals.

Evolution would then complete a $13 million IPO with the provision to accept oversubscriptions.

Of the $13 million, $6.5 million would be used to repay lender Castelake with the outstanding $3 million of debt to the entity to be expended via either cash from the IPO or Evolution shares.

Marvel plans to receive between 28% and 43% of shares issued under the IPO.

“The IPO of Evolution is the opportunity for Marvel to remove the historical depth encumbrance and unlock Chilalo’s value potential,” Mr Hoskins explained.

He added the IPO would enable the company to focus on advancing Tabakorole.