Fox turns attention to gold in Pilbara

Fox Resources will turn its exploration efforts at several of its Pilbara tenements to gold after metal detectors identified 1,000 ounces of gold.

The company today said that the recent success of prospectors on its E47/1202 exploration licence, awarded in July, had prompted it to devote exploration efforts towards gold potential of specific tenements.

E47/1202 is located to the west of Fox's Ruth Well nickel sulphide deposit, and was originally pegged due to its potential to host additional nickel mineralisation.

Fox managing director Bruno Seneque said the company was encouraged by the potential for significant gold discovery on existing tenements.

"This opens up an exciting new exploration front for Fox alongside our ongoing activities to build up nickel and base metal resources for the proposed heap leaching operations," said Mr Seneque.

"The fact is that although it's still early days, Fox has a number of tenements in this area that are demonstrating the potential to host one or more gold deposits.

"It's quite a dramatic scenario to have prospectors discovering gold nuggets on your tenement - so we are rapidly moving forward with fieldwork and orientation surveys in the area."

Shares in Fox were up two cents to 30c at 12:07 AEDT.

The announcement is below:

Fox Resources Limited (ASX: FXR, Fox) today announced new gold potential in several of the Company's 100%-owned tenements in the Pilbara of Western Australia.

The recent success of prospectors on Fox's exploration license E47/1202, using only metal detectors, has prompted the Company to devote exploration efforts towards the gold potential of specific tenements.

Fox was granted exploration license E47/1202 in July 2009, which lies to the west of the Company's Ruth Well nickel sulphide deposit and north of the regionally extensive Sholl Shear.

The tenement was originally pegged due to its proximity to Ruth Well and its potential to host additional nickel sulphide mineralisation. However, due to the recent prospector activity that has reputedly seen 1,000oz of gold being won from the area, Fox's immediate exploration activity on this tenement will be to follow up on the gold discovery.

Fox Resources' Managing Director, Mr Bruno Seneque, said the Company was encouraged by the potential for a significant gold discovery on existing tenements.

"This opens up an exciting new exploration front for Fox alongside our ongoing activities to build up nickel and base metal resources for the proposed heap leaching operations," said Mr Seneque.

"The fact is that although it's still early days, Fox has a number of tenements in this area that are demonstrating the potential to host one or more gold deposits," he said.

"It's quite a dramatic scenario to have prospectors discovering gold nuggets on your tenement - so we are rapidly moving forward with fieldwork and orientation surveys in the area."

An orientation soil geochemistry-sampling programme has commenced over several areas within the E47/1202 tenement, which have been the subject of intense prospector activity.

"Interestingly, the gold potential has been identified in a variety of geological settings, some of which were previously unrecognised and none of which have been adequately explored," said Mr Seneque.

Results of the programme will provide information on the distribution of the gold within the regolith profile and will assist in determining the best and most cost effective method to evaluate the broader area of interest. A programme of regolith and bedrock mapping, rock chip sampling will also be completed over the area.

This potential is demonstrated by Railway Bore, a new gold prospect for Fox, located approximately 12km southeast of Radio Hill. The gold potential of the Railway Bore areas has recently been identified from re-assaying of regional soil samples for gold over a broad spaced (500m x 30m) soil sampling grid. Several anomalous areas have been identified, with individual samples returning up to a maximum of 1,080 ppb (1.0 g/t).

A follow-up augur soil sampling survey to better define the extent of the anomalies will commence next week.