ASX-listed West Africa gold explorer, Mako Gold has expanded its footprint in the fertile auriferous terrane in Côte d’lvoire receiving approval from the country’s Ministry of Mines for the Ouangolodougou permit area. The newly granted permit together with the company’s existing Korhogo Nord permit will now constitute its Korhogo gold project.
Korhogo is located in the same Birimian greenstone belt that hosts Barrick Gold’s 4.9-million-ounce Tongon gold mine and Montage Gold’s 1.2-million-ounce Kone gold deposit, both in Côte d’Ivoire, as well as Teranga Gold Corp’s 2.7Moz Wahgnion gold mine across the border in Burkina Faso.
Brisbane-based Mako says Korhogo’s two permits collectively span 296 square kilometres and straddle approximately 17km of faulted greenstone-granite contact.
According to the company, the close proximity of its project to Barrick’s Tongon gold operation infrastructure presents potential accretive development and processing synergies in the event Mako can prove up a gold deposit at the Korhogo Nord and or Ouangolodougou permits.
Mako Gold Managing Director, Peter Ledwidge said: “We are pleased to have secured a further 111 square kilometres of prospective tenure in Côte d’Ivoire, within the same Birimian greenstone belt as Barrick’s 4.9-million-ounce Tongon gold mine. To our knowledge, no previous exploration has been conducted on the Ouangolodougou permit, so we are excited to be launching a maiden exploration program on the permit shortly.”
Mako intends undertaking soil sampling work at the Korhogo project ahead of a maiden drilling program.
The company says its core focus remains the Napié gold project further south where it currently has two drill rigs operating on double shifts.
Resource definition drilling is now set to resume at Mako’s exciting Tchaga prospect at Napié after the completion of 16 RC drill holes for an aggregate of 1,679 metres at the Tchaga East prospect a couple of kilometres to the east of Tchaga. The other rig has so far drilled four holes of the planned 5,200m RC program at the Gogbala prospect south of Tchaga.
Better recent drill intersections from Tchaga were a stonking 41m at an average grade of 4.51 grams per tonne gold from 17m depth including 3m at 8.16 g/t from 17m, 6m at 9.4 g/t from 43m and 3m at 16.34 g/t from 53m, and 5m at 21.99 g/t from 70m including 1m at 107 g/t from 71m.
Other notable recent high-grade intercepts were a diamond hole that went 7.9m grading 4.63 g/t from 122.8m including 1m at 27.61 g/t from 126m, and an RC hole that logged 21m at 2.26 g/t from 71m including 1m at 16.85 g/t from 72m.
Mako pointed out the 41m intercept was the widest, high-grade drill hit delivered at Tchaga to date and that 46 of the recent 51 RC and two diamond holes drilled at Tchaga penetrated gold mineralisation, with 17 registering assays of more than 10 gram-metres.
Multiple wide gold intersections containing high-grade intervals were returned from the stacked mineralised zones within the company’s resource target area on the Tchaga prospect.
Mako hopes to put out a maiden mineral resource estimate for Tchaga some time this year.
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By Matt Birney
