Marvel Gold increases landholding in Mali to underpin standalone operation

Mali explorer Marvel Gold (ASX: MVL) has acquired six new permits to increase the size of its Tabakorole gold project in the north African country to 830sq km.

Three separate vendors agreed to transfer their tenements in southern Mali to the company.

Marvel managing director Phil Hoskins said the acquisitions have consolidated a land position around the “already significant” Tabakorole project.

“Our strategy is to develop Tabakorole into a standalone mining operation by consolidating a significant landholding, and undertaking systematic exploration to make additional gold discoveries will maximise our chances of achieving that strategy,” he said.

Tabakorole currently has a JORC mineral resource of 910,000 ounces grading at 1.2 grams per tonne gold.

New tenement plugs gap in landholding

The Tabakorole project is held through 100%-owned licences as well as two separate joint ventures, one of an 80% interest with Oklo Resources (ASX: OKU) and the other where it holds a 51% stake in partnership with London-listed Altus Strategies.

Those of the new licences that adjoin Tabakorole now form part of the joint venture with Altus.

In its announcement, Marvel singles out the acquisition of the Sirakoroble Sud licence, saying it is particularly important.

Not only does this licence area fill a previous gap in Marvel’s landholding position, but it is located along the northwest trending structural corridor identified by magnetics as well as being punctuated by a strong trend of geochemical anomalism.

This new area lies directly south of the reported 910,000oz resource.

First step will be soil geochemistry

Marvel said the next steps, as with all of the company’s newly acquired licences, is to collect multi-element soil geochemistry datasets.

This opens up the potential for subsequent ground magnetics, a survey technique that the company says is working “very well” in this region in terms of defining structures.

“Targets will then be ranked and prioritised against the 40 discrete targets generated from the regional datasets collected during 2020-21,” the company stated.

Marvel recently completed an extensive regional exploration program during its first field season at Tabakorole.

It reported the field team collecting 4,267 soil samples and undertaking 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.