Dundee Precious Metals drills 63.6 g/t gold over 40 metres at Coka Rakita, Serbia
Dundee Precious Metals Inc. [DPM-TSX] has discovered a high-grade deposit at the Coka Rakita exploration prospect in eastern Serbia and report exceptional results from recent drilling. Coka Rakita is located 3 km southeast of the company’s Timok gold project and is 100% owned by Dundee.
Highlights: Exceptional new high-grade intercepts, including drill hole RADDMET01 that returned 40 metres at 63.46 g/t gold and 0.11% copper from 517 metres depth (including one metre grading 2,140 g/t gold from 548 to 549 metres).
RIDD001 returned 71 metres at 3.46 g/t gold and 0.16% copper from 454 metres depth. RIDD004 returned 65 metres at 13.40 g/t gold from 511 metres, including 38 metres at 19.43 g/t gold from 537 metres depth.
The drilling expanded on positive results from previously drilled holes, which include RADD013 that returned 36 metres at 4.41 g/t gold, including 6 metres at 11.44 g/t gold and 5 metres at 10.66 g/t gold, from 567 metres depth.
RADD020 returned 26 metres at 7.52 g/t gold, including 6 metres at 24.94 g/t gold, from 533 metres depth.
The large defined footprint, deposit remains open: a shallow-dipping tabular body between 250 and 450 metres below surface, drilled over an area measuring 500 metres long, 250 metres wide and up to 80 metres thick, which remains open in multiple directions.
Significant additional exploration potential: approximately 40,000 metres of infill, extensional and target delineation drilling is planned for 2023, with a focus on further evaluating the deposit geometry, grade continuity and mineral resource potential.
Encouraging metallurgical results: Preliminary metallurgical test results indicate that the mineralized material is amenable to conventional flotation and produces a clean gold concentrate, achieving total combined (flotation and tails leach) gold recoveries of greater than 93%. Test work to potentially improve overall gold recovery using a combined gravity and flotation circuit is planned for 2023.
“We are excited to announce these exceptional results from recent drilling completed at the Coka Rakita prospect in Serbia. Drilling has defined a large, high-grade footprint that remains open in multiple directions, which we believe provides additional upside potential,” said David Rae, President and CEO. “The discovery of a high-grade deposit in close proximity to our Timok gold project is an exciting development for the overall property package. Our activities in Serbia will now focus on exploration at Coka Rakita as we continue to assess the mineral resource potential of this new discovery.”
As previously disclosed, exploration activities at the Coka Rakita prospect resumed in the fourth quarter of 2022 following receipt of a newly granted exploration licence. In this most recent drill program, DPM drilled 8,750 metres and completed 10 holes, with five additional holes currently ongoing. This program was designed to follow-up on positive results returned from holes drilled prior to the expiry of the previous exploration licence.
Based on the results of a recent ground gravity survey, additional drilling is planned to test the full extent of the Coka Rakita gold-rich skarn target, which continues to show potential for growth.
Plans include extending holes from the current phase of drilling at depth to delineate the extents of deeper strata-bound conglomerate-hosted copper-gold mineralization. Approximately 40,000 metres of infill, extensional and target delineation drilling is planned at Coka Rakita in 2023, with the primary focus of further assessing the overall deposit geometry, grade continuity and mineral resource potential. This includes infilling the current footprint on a 60m x 60m drilling grid over the high-grade gold-rich skarn target zone, as well as closer spaced drilling (20m x 20m) to assess the short-range continuity of the mineralization.
Additionally, 10,000 metres of drilling is planned at the adjacent Umka exploration licence, which is located to the south of Coka Rakita and shares a similar geological environment. This work is intended to follow-up on ground gravity surveys completed in 2022 and will involve integration of all other available data in order to delineate additional undercover high-grade skarn targets.
As indicated in the third quarter of 2022, given the potential of this new high-grade discovery on the advancement of the overall property package, the company now expects to focus on further exploration at Coka Rakita in 2023. As a result, the company is pausing further work on the Timok feasibility study.
The Timok gold project has a Probable Mineral Reserve estimate of 662,000 oz gold contained within 19.2 million tonnes at 1.07 g/t and an additional Indicated Mineral Resource estimate of 1.3 million oz gold contained within 32.3 million tonnes at 1.27 g/t.2 The above Mineral Reserve and Mineral Resource does not incorporate any drilling at Coka Rakita, which will be assessed as a separate high-grade deposit.