Aurum strikes African gold on new ground

Assays from the first eight diamond drill holes at Aurum Resources’ Boundiali gold project in Côte d'Ivoire, West Africa suggest wide, shallow gold mineralisation ‑ with more assays on the horizon.

The best results were 16m at 1.24 grams per tonne (g/t) from 117m including a 6m thick section grading 2.44g/t from 127m, 7.39m at 1.94g/t from 139.34m including 5.35m at 2.53g/t from 141.37m and 16.3m at 1.02g/t from 86.7m including an 8m chunk going 1.71g/t from 95m.

More results include 15.82m at 0.94g/t from 5.18m including 4.5m at 1.77g/t from 16.5m, 10.5m at 0.95g/t from 21m and 13.95m at 0.85g/t from 181m. 

The Boundiali project is made up of two tenements - Boundiali BM and BD – and the recent set of assays are the first from the now complete 31-hole diamond drillhole programme at Boundiali BM.  Management says assays from the remaining 23 holes are with the lab and are expected sometime in the first quarter.

Next up for drilling is the Boundiali BD tenement where Aurum has already kicked-off the first of 51 diamond drill holes planned to provide a total of 7145m of core for sampling and lab assay.

Notably, all of that will be drilled using Aurum’s own two rigs acquired from original tenement holder PlusOr Global as part of the larger deal for both Boundiali tenements announced to the market in December last year. 

Aurum Resources non-executive director Caigen Wang said: “Thick oxidised gold mineralisation is an initial priority target for us at the Boundiali Gold Project, as it gives the potential for a low-cost, free digging mining operation for a prospective future open-pit mine resulting from our aggressive diamond drilling programs. The extension of wide primary gold mineralisation into fresh rock confirms our confidence in our ability to generate gold resource growth while we are drilling towards depth on multiple targets.”

Aurum says the Boundiali tenements contain some eyebrow raising historic gold drill hits as high as 1m at a massive 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 says soil sampling across the project has put the spotlight on two anomalous areas with more than 100 parts per billion gold concentration.

The project sits in an area on the Boundiali greenstone belt which is considered prospective for gold and has its fair share of big hitting gold focussed neighbours. 

About 50kms to the north of Boundiali, Perseus Mining is sitting on a 1.4-million-ounce gold resource at its Sissingue mine and about 120km to the south, Montage Gold’s Koné project contains 4 million ounces.  The Boundiali project area itself has seen historic artisanal gold mining, however Aurum is interested in what may lie beneath.

It says Côte d'Ivoire has a stable government and is emerging as a world class gold producer. The African nation hosts eight operating gold mines delivering more than one million ounces of gold per annum, owned by well-known miners including Tietto Minerals, Barrick Gold and Allied Gold Mining as well as Perseus Mining and Montage Gold.

Interestingly this is not Caigen Wang’s first rodeo – he is part of a very small club of ASX-listed company Managing Directors that have managed to build operating gold mines in Africa. Before joining Aurum, Wang led Tietto Minerals and managed to get through all the hoops to build Tietto’s Abujar gold mine in Côte d'Ivoire.

And it’s not a bad time to be finding gold with prices for the metal hitting its strides recently, with the precious yellow metal trading today at around $3070 per ounce.  J.P. Morgan research estimates suggest gold may hit a peak of $3488 per ounce in the third quarter of next year.

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