Montage drills 4.95 metres of 22.25 g/t gold in West Africa
Montage Gold Corp. [MAU-TSXV] on Tuesday May 11 released additional results from an ongoing infill drill program as well as a general project update for its flagship Morondo Gold Project in northwest Cote d’Ivoire. The project, to be renamed the Kone Gold Project, is also 600 km northwest of Abidjan, the country’s commercial capital.
Infill drilling highlights include 4.95 metres of grade 22.25 g/t gold within 200.50 metres, grading 1.51 g/t gold.
“We continue to be extremely impressed with the infill drill results, which now include the best drill result ever generated at the Kone deposit,” said CEO Hugh Stuart in a press release. “We have hit a previously unknown area of significant high-grade mineralization within the deposit, and we are using this information to better understand the features of the deposit that control high grades to direct future drilling,” Stuart said.
“As we have said in previous releases, we expect a high percentage of resource conversion from inferred to indicated and this latest batch of results continues to affirm that view,” he said. “Furthermore, given our strong balance sheet we are in the position to expand our current drill program from 35,000 to 55,000 metres.”
The expanded program will allow the company to increase the drilling below the current Kone resource and includes drilling at the nearby high-grade Petit Yao target.
The primary aim is to improve confidence levels by upgrading the existing inferred resource of 123 million tonnes, grading 0.80 g/t or 3.16 million ounces of gold (at 0.40 g/t cut-off) to the indicated category.
“We expect the expanded drill program to be completed by early July, allowing us to prepare the indicated mineral resource estimate for the Kone deposit in early Q3 which will feed into the feasibility study,” Stuart said.
On Tuesday, the shares were down 1.1% or $0.01 to 91 cents in light trading. The shares trade in a 52-week range of $1.27 and 65 cents.
Montage Gold, a company led by former executives of Red Back Mining Inc., recently closed an initial public offering that raised $30 million from the sale of 27.3 million common shares priced at $1.10 per share.
The company is led by Hugh Stuart, former vice-president of Red Back Mining Inc., a company that was acquired by Kinross Gold Corp.[K-TSX; KGC-NYSE] back in May 2010 in a $7.1 billion deal.
Morondo, which is host to the Kone deposit, will be renamed the Kone Gold Project to better align the identity of the project to local stakeholders and is being implemented as part of ongoing ESIA and permitting efforts currently under way.