Tietto Minerals reports high-grade results from step-out drilling at Abujar gold project

West African gold explorer and developer Tietto Minerals (ASX: TIE) has reported high‐grade gold results from multiple targets identified as part of regional and step‐out diamond drilling outside its flagship Abujar gold project in Côte d’Ivoire.

The work is part of a systematic 70,000m campaign across the tenure which aims to grow existing resources and test new prospects identified by the company’s exploration team.

Tietto has so far completed 58 holes for 11,740.5m over seven of the prospects, which has returned strong intercepts including 1m at 46.57 grams per tonne gold from surface at GGL, and 1m at 32.58g/t gold from 167m beneath gold in soil anomalism at Koflankro.

Gold mineralisation was intersected in drilling at Koflankro over a 600m strike along multiple parallel contacts and more than 1,900m of strike remains to be tested.

Drilling at the APG target intercepted good widths and grades such as 11m at 2.17g/t gold from 37m, including 4m at 5.09g/t gold. This has confirmed mineralisation is present over an additional 400m strike length outside of the current resource model.

The company also hit a potential new lode at Abujar Gludehi West (also known as AG West and located immediately west of the AG deposit), returning 7m at 1.33g/t gold from 20m including 1m at 7.62g/t gold from beneath a quartz vein mapped on surface.

Scratching the surface

Tietto managing director Dr Caigen Wang believes the company has “only just scratched the surface” of the large Abujar gold system.

“With six of our diamond drill rigs running day and night for up to 3,000m of drill core per week, we are very pleased to be able to simultaneously drill for resource growth and category upgrades,” he said.

“We continue to hit high-grade gold mineralisation in new areas where we are drilling for the first time and the results provide us with great encouragement as we work towards a maiden reserve announcement and pre-feasibility study later this quarter.”

Soil sampling

Tietto has also collected 3,089 soil samples over a 200m by  25m grid to test and sterilise prospective structures associated with potential infrastructure locations.

The soil sampling program has identified multiple high‐grade gold-in-soil hits including 5,038 parts per billion gold (over 5.04g/t gold).

More than 75 samples reported greater than 100ppb gold-in-soil, including nine of more than 500ppb gold (0.5g/t).

Dr Wang said the company’s own diamond drill rigs would follow-up and test the high‐priority targets.

“We plan to aggressively drill Abujar throughout [this year] to deliver rapid resource growth at industry low discovery costs per ounce,” he said.

“These results demonstrate the potential for continued resource growth [at Abujar] and put us on track to become West Africa’s next gold producer.”