Mining

Tesoro Resources tops up coffers, unlocks even more gold potential at El Zorro

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By Lorna Nicholas - 
Tesoro Resources gold El Zorro Toro Gordo target ASX TSO

A highlight trench sample at Toro Gordo was 40m at 1.23 grams per tonne gold, including 8m at 3.14g/t gold.

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A day after topping up its cash reserves, Tesoro Resources (ASX: TSO) has unlocked even more gold potential at El Zorro in Chile after trenching at the Toro Gordo target uncovered “extensive surface mineralisation”.

The mineralisation has been defined over 650m by 500m and is immediately south of the project’s flagship Ternera deposit where drilling is underway around the clock.

At Toro Gordo, 538 controlled samples were taken from 25 excavated trenches.

Notable trench samples at Toro Gordo were 40m at 1.23 grams per tonne gold, including 8m at 3.14g/t gold; 23m at 2.16g/t gold, including 1m at 42.7g/t gold; and 18m at 1.23g/t gold, including 4m at 3.97g/t gold.

Tesoro will use these trenching results to plan a maiden drilling program at Toro Gordo in January next year.

“El Zorro continues to deliver exciting exploration results and these results from Toro Gordo further enhance the scale and prospectivity of the project,” Tesoro managing director Zeff Reeves said.

“Surface gold mineralisation is now continuous from Toro Gordo to the north of Ternera over 1,500m of strike.”

Mr Reeves said the company was “excited” for what lies ahead with drilling at Toro Gordo and continued drilling at Ternera.

“El Zorro is demonstrating its potential to be a significant district scale gold system,” he added.

Cashed up to continue exploring

To underpin its planned fast-tracked exploration across El Zorro, Tesoro revealed a $21 million capital raising earlier this week.

The company received firm commitments for a $18 million placement and seeks to raise a further $3 million under a share purchase plan.

As part of these, investors were offered shares at $0.27 each, which was a 9.3% discount to the previous closing price and a 14.6% discount to the five-day trading and 15-day trading volume weighted average price.

Of note, Tesoro’s existing major share holder fund manager Tribeca Investment Partners cornerstoned the placement with its $5 million commitment.

Combined with existing reserves, Tesoro will have more than $24 million in funds to advance El Zorro.