Aruma soil sampling unveils Pilbara gold potential

Aruma Resources has unveiled a swag of potential targets to follow up for gold and polymetallic mineralisation in the latest soil-sampling results from its Saltwater play in Western Australia’s Pilbara region.

Sampling across three prospects at the Saltwater project has reaffirmed its potential as being a multi-commodity play for gold and base metals.

Management says the recent program has successfully identified an anomalous greenfields gold target at its Terceira prospect within the Saltwater project area. The residual surface gold anomaly is coincident with a large surface arsenic halo and a geophysical magnetic anomaly and represents a highly-prospective new gold target in a greenfield location.

In addition to the new gold target, Aruma says soil sampling has verified the existence of further volcanogenic massive sulphide (VMS) systems with elements such as manganese, barium, copper and cobalt.

The findings also feature a series of anomalies of rare earths and tellurides within the soil at the Oracle prospect.

The latest sampling has been completed over rock-chip anomalies previously discovered at the Saltwater project and has delivered strong anomalism across the three prospects. The gold anomalism that stood out at the Terceira prospect included 0.38 grams per tonne gold and 356 parts per million arsenic, 0.14g/t gold and 371ppm arsenic, 0.14g/t gold and 204ppm arsenic and 0.12g/t gold and 443ppm arsenic.

In addition to previously-reported cobalt-copper at the Orichalcum prospect, further manganese-cobalt polymetallic anomalism has been detected and includes 1.1 per cent manganese, 612ppm cobalt, 387ppm copper, 0.37g/t silver and 0.19per cent barium.

At the Oracle prospect, sampling detected rare earths and telluride enrichment containing 295ppm cerium, 160ppm lanthanum and 535ppm barium, and 0.28g/t tellurium, 200ppm copper and 205ppm nickel.

It is clear Aruma has several highly-promising projects on its hands and Saltwater may turn out to be the pick of the bunch. 

Aruma Resources managing director Glenn Grayson said: "The results generated to date from our ongoing sampling program are very encouraging and highlights the Project’s potential by continuing to deliver materially positive results from this initial, targeted fieldwork. Based on results to date, we are confident we have identified a high-value manganese-cobalt target, multiple VMS targets, as well as a promising uranium prospect – and with the latest phase of sampling, have uncovered an exciting, new greenfields gold target.” 

There are several other promising prospects at Saltwater. Outcrop sampling and heli-mapping has generated new targets, with the Inkwell Ridge prospect hosting more than 7km of anomalous iron, copper, lithium and rare earths rock chips, with additional rock chips from the Euros prospect showing the potential for a mineralised mafic intrusive complex. 

Samples have been collected based on prior targeting designed through Aruma’s integration of geophysical, radiometric, geological and structural data. The company says it will continue to deploy its methodical approach while scrutinising the anomalous rock-chip results. It will also thoroughly evaluate the remaining 70 per cent of the project area, which remains largely underexplored.

A systematic exploration approach is designed to ensure more targeted and efficient planning for first drilling of priority targets at the Saltwater project, planned for next year. 

The company’s next steps in the coming months involve plans to define and model geochemical and geophysical targets and to undertake ground gravity surveys to delineate targets at depth. 

The Saltwater project comprises four granted exploration licences for a total area of 450 square kilometres and is situated about 120km south-west of the regional mining town of Newman.

Aruma also has several other promising opportunities available, with its Salmon Gums gold project producing historical results of 28m at 8.41g/t gold, 5m at 50.2g/t from 42m and 7.6m at 7.3g/t from 38.4m. Its Mt. Deans lithium project has drill results of 8m at 1.1 per cent lithium oxide from 26m and 5m at 1.2 per cent lithium oxide from 4m. 

Now, management will be hoping its many multi-commodity targets can deliver on their promise with the planned future drilling program. If they can, Saltwater will prove to be a pleasant taste in the mouth of shareholders.

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