MetalsGrove Mining is steadily stitching together a promising new gold story in central-west Côte d’Ivoire, West Africa, with early-stage soil sampling pointing to a second priority gold target at its Zuénoula permit.
The new target, dubbed the “Fifty-Five Area”, sits one kilometre north of the company’s previously flagged Central Area and is defined by four gold-anomalous soil samples spread along a 2.4-kilometre-long northeasterly structural trend.
To give a quick read on whether gold may be present for target refinement, the company is using PortablePPB, a rapid field-testing method based on the patented detectORE process.
In simple terms, a small soil sample is leached with GLIX-20 reagent in a bottle-roll to extract tiny traces of gold. The gold sticks to a collector, which is then read with a handheld X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) machine.
This process has been backed by limited fire assay analysis in the Fifty-Five Area, which partially validated the early results, with one sample assaying 23 parts per billion (ppb) gold - typically regarded as a meaningful anomalous value in near-surface soil geochemistry.
MetalsGrove has already completed 400m-by-400m infill soil sampling across about 10 square kilometres of the Fifty-Five Area and is now waiting on assays.
At the adjacent Central Area, the company’s PortablePPB field assay results outlined a north-east trending alignment of seven gold-anomalous soil samples, stretching the strike out to 3.4 kilometres. Initial fire assay validation of those Central Area samples has delivered two results, both at a maximum of 49ppb gold.
The encouraging geochemical responses from both the Fifty-Five Area and the Central Area have prompted MetalsGrove to expand the broad 400-metre infill sampling program from 13 to 20 square kilometres to chase the inferred northeasterly extension of the trend.
The company has also completed similar infill work over its South East Corner structural target, which sits on the margin of a granite intrusion. Assay results from that area are also pending.
All infill samples from the Fifty-Five Area, Central Area and South East Corner are due to be delivered to Bureau Veritas in Abidjan this week for fire assay, with results expected mid to late March.
Any coherent gold zones identified by those analyses will then be tightened up with a final round of high-density soil sampling on a closed-up 100m-by-50m grid to help anchor drill planning.
MetalsGrove Mining managing director and chief executive officer Lijun Yang said: “The identification of a second gold target at the Fifty-Five Area highlights the scale and growing prospectivity of our Zuénoula PR750 permit.”
The latest update has built on MetalsGrove’s February announcement, when early district-scale soils first outlined the anomalous Central Area, prompting the company to set up its field assay laboratory nearby in Zuénoula township to speed up decision-making in the field.
The Zuénoula prospect forms part of MetalsGrove’s Central West Gold project, a 1315-square-kilometre package of joint venture permits in Côte d’Ivoire. The ground lies along the highly prospective Abujar–Napié gold trend within the famed Birimian greenstones, a prolific host of gold deposits across West Africa.
With three target areas now in the queue for fire assay and a clear pathway to tighter infill and drill design, MetalsGrove looks set to move quickly to turn broad-brush anomalies into targets the rigs can properly test.
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By Doug Bright
