Mt.Sen review confirms high-grade gold potential of PNG assets for Frontier Resources

Frontier Resources (ASX: FNT) has confirmed the completion of an independent review of historical exploration results at the Mt.Sen system of gold veins, 800m north of its Tolukuma mining lease and within tenement EL2531 in Papua New Guinea.

Of a total 332 rock chip and hand trench samples collected during the review period, 47 returned assay values greater than 1 grams per tonne gold and eight had values greater than 10g/t gold.

The highest reported gold values from the samples were 34.8g/t, 33.9g/t, 24.3g/t, 19.4g/t and 17.5g/t, with results for silver and base metals generally low to weakly anomalous.

A rock sample of 432g/t gold was identified in the Emaloun mineralised structure with a wide range of gold values occurring in numerous other small veins and cross structures.

The Mt.Sen prospect covers an area north of the Auga River in Papua New Guinea’s Northern Province and was discovered when visible gold‐bearing quartz was found in a north-northwest‐trending shear zone.

Two structures have since been identified at Emaloun and Tumbu, with the latter being a northern extension of the Kimono structure located to the east of the Tolukuma mine.

Visible gold has been observed in hand specimens from Tumbu and Emaloun.

Hand trenching

During the review period, a total of eight hand trenches were dug in two phases on the Tumbu and Emaloun ridges targeting the mineralised structures, with the best result being 0.3m at 431.5g/t gold.

Other trench assay results include 46.0g/t, 15.1g/t, 9.92g/t, 7.73g/t and 7.37g/t gold at Emaloun and 7.62g/t gold at Tumbu.

All but one of the trenches intersected the targeted structures and most samples collected across the structures were anomalous (greater than 0.1g/t gold).

Mining lease

The Tolukuma tenement covers almost 442sq km and totally surrounds the Tolukuma gold mining lease (ML104) granted to Frontier in March 2019.

The nearby Tolukuma underground and open pit gold mines contain high-grade, narrow epithermal veins and a long history of having its gold reserves continuously extended.

ML104 forms part of a tenement portfolio owned by Tolukuma Gold Mines, where 10km of road access had been completed prior to the closure of operations in 2002 in a time of low gold prices.

The company is in the process of securing a new owner for the mines to provide necessary funding to refurbish the asset and re‐commence gold production.

Highly-prospective area

EL2531 completely surrounds ML104 and contains significant gold systems, which Frontier continues to explore and believes will be required for future additional mill feed.

The area is believed to be highly prospective for satellite high-grade epithermal gold and porphyry copper-gold deposits.

With completion of the independent review, Frontier said it will commence planning a multi‐phase exploration program of geological mapping, trench sampling, rock sampling, soil sampling at the Kimono prospect, followed by a drilling program to define a maiden resource at the advanced Saki gold deposit.

At mid-morning, shares in Frontier Resources were trading 20% higher at $0.012.