MetalsGrove Mining has taken a big leap forward at its Central West gold project in Côte d’Ivoire, locking onto two parallel gold anomalies, each stretching more than 2.5 kilometres.
The newly identified corridors run through the company's flagship Fifty-Five prospect, which forms part of its highly prospective Zuénoula permit and have now been officially marked out as potential drill targets.
The breakthrough came on the back of soil sampling that delivered an attention-grabbing peak value of 583 parts per billion (ppb) gold. This impressive result sat comfortably inside a broader 3.3-kilometre gold-bearing corridor, putting Fifty-Five at the top of the company’s exploration pecking order.
To capitalise on the success, field crews have been mobilised to conduct a tighter, high-density infill grid. MetalsGrove says the existing broad-spaced 200-metre by 200-metre sampling layout will be squeezed down to a 200-metre by 50-metre framework to sharpen definition ahead of an extensive auger drilling campaign.
Adding weight to the discovery, the north-east orientation of these newly defined gold trends runs parallel to the dominant regional structures. These major faults control several multi-million-ounce West African gold systems within the prospective Birimian greenstone belt, significantly boosting the company’s exploration confidence in its targets.
To ensure nothing was missed, MetalsGrove has also wrapped up a comprehensive sample of local termite mounds and loose quartz-vein material dotted across the high-grade zones, with assays now pending. Termite mounds effectively bring up deep subsurface materials from depths of up to 15 metres. As a traditional West African exploration tool, the insect spoils provide a cost-effective subterranean window into what treasures may be lurking beneath.
The company’s exploration precision was also boosted with the use of detailed topographical mapping, now finished across the area. This included high-resolution drone-borne LiDAR and orthophoto surveying technology to map precise elevation profiles, surface water flows, and geochemical dispersion pathways.
This dataset is being matched up with the soil geochemistry to plot optimal paths for the upcoming auger drilling program, which, importantly, is expected to remain fully operational throughout the June-to-September wet season.
The company has now processed fire-assay results for 1000 soil samples from phase one of the sampling program, while a further 617 collected soil samples are currently sitting at the laboratory with assays pending.
MetalsGrove Mining managing director and chief executive officer Lijun Yang said: “Defining our first gold potential drill target at the Fifty-Five Prospect is an important milestone for MetalsGrove and further validates the prospectivity of our Central West Gold Project in Côte d’Ivoire.”
Beyond Fifty-Five, MetalsGrove holds a commanding district-scale landholding in Côte d’Ivoire. Its broader Central West gold project spans a combined footprint of 1315 square kilometres across four strategically positioned permits along the prolific Abujar-Napié gold trend.
This includes the Central prospect, just one kilometre south of Fifty-Five, which also recently firmed up with a strong 148ppb gold response.
Furthermore, four newly defined regional zones named Eastern, Rouge, Konezra, and South-West have popped up with encouraging soil anomalies exceeding 30 parts per billion gold.
MetalsGrove says the next phases of work will include completing wide scout grids across regional prospects and high-density infill sampling at Fifty-Five. The geos will then plot the incoming assay data from the pending 617 samples to plan the wet-season auger traverses.
With a rapidly growing portfolio of targets and cutting-edge data on the desk, MetalsGrove is putting all the right pieces together in a world-class gold neighbourhood.
Punters will likely keep their eyes peeled for further assay results and the start of augur drilling as this West African story continues to heat up.
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By Murray Ward
