Aurum Resources has completed its acquisition of PlusOr Global and now officially owns ground in Africa’s Côte d’Ivoire, where historic drill hits have run as high as 1m at a massive 30.8 grams per tonne gold from 42m.
The company says diamond drilling at the project is underway and 29 holes have been completed across three targets for 4592m of core, with assays due back next month. A further 7km of core drilling is expected to follow.
Aurum’s new ground is made up of two exploration permits, one of which contains the Boundiali gold project joint venture. It is known as the BM project and the company is drilling to earn a final 80 to 88 per cent interest in future gold production.
Management says there are four historic reverse-circulation (RC) holes within BM that returned assays as high as 22m at 1.06g/t gold from 87m. Soil sampling across the project has shown two anomalous areas with more than 100 parts per billion gold concentration.
Aurum also says BM is covered by an airborne electromagnetic dataset, has 816 rock-chip samples and 93 air-core (AC) drill holes. Gold assays from AC holes within a soil anomaly went as high as 1m at 30.8g/t from 42m, 5m at 2.09g/t from 25m, 11m at 1.98g/t from 8m, 10m at 1.63g/t from 102m, 6m at 1.67g/t from 28m and 22m at 1.06g/t from 87m.
The company has attained an 80 per cent interest in a second permit by paying US$430,000 (AU$637,000) and it will drill 51 diamond-core holes for 7145m across three targets. That program is expected to kick-off this month.
Management says the area is well-defined by soil sampling, while multiple gold-bearing corridors tested by 91 historic RC holes gave assays as high as 4m at 5.06g/t from 45m, 5m at 2.96g/t from 33m, 3m at 4.12g/t from 27m, 4m at 2.67g/t from 57m and 5m at 2.01g/t from 27m. Other RC assays showed thicker mineralisation with 26m at 1.61g/t gold from 86m, 33m at 1.01g/t from 31m, 12m at 1.68g/t from 94m, 20m at 0.97g/t from 44m and 16m at 1.12g/t from 30m.
Aurum Resources non-executive chairman Troy Flannery said: “We are very pleased to have acquired 100% of PlusOr following the satisfactory completion of our due diligence where no issues were identified. It’s worth noting that PlusOr currently has two drills operating at Boundiali and has already drilled 29 diamond holes for 4592m.”
The acquisition deal gives Aurum ownership of assets including two man-portable hydraulic diamond drilling rigs and consumables for 10,000m of drilling. Owning the rigs means the company is saving bags of cash rather than forking out the dollars at contract rig rates.
On the staffing front, Aurum’s board will gain the experienced Caigen Wang as a non-executive director. Dr Wang was the founder and managing director of Tietto Minerals for 13 years until May this year and was responsible for bringing that company’s Abujar gold mine in Côte d'Ivoire to full production.
Management says Côte d'Ivoire has a stable government and is emerging as a serious gold producer. The nation hosts eight operating gold mines that are delivering more than one million ounces per annum and are owned by well-known miners including Tietto Minerals, Barrick Gold, Perseus Mining and Allied Gold Mining.
About 50km to the north of Aurum’s ground, Perseus’ Sissingue gold mine is digging away at a 1.4-million-ounce gold resource and about 120km to the south, Montage Gold’s Koné project contains 4 million ounces of gold.
The gold price is still on the rise and sitting at about $3025 per ounce in Australia today. So, its not a bad time to be picking up gold ground with historic drill hits and where neighbours have big resources.
Watch this space for Aurum assay results next month.
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By Andrew Duffy
