Strickland adds drill muscle to test new Serbian gold prospect

Strickland Metals has reinforced its drilling capacity at its Rogozna gold-base metals project in southern Serbia with the addition of a fifth diamond drilling rig, which has already begun work at its Obradov Potok prospect.

Coincident multi-element gold-arsenic soil geochemistry and an induced polarisation (IP) anomaly with surface hydrothermal alteration has already been identified at the four-square-kilometre prospect, which is 3.5 kilometres southwest of the company’s 5.3-million-ounce gold equivalent Shanac gold resource.    

Other nearby significant developing resource targets include Strickland’s advancing 0.81M-ounce gold equivalent Copper Canyon and its pending resource at Gradina, 2.75km and 1.75km northeast of Obradov Potok respectively. 

The combined geochemical and geophysical signatures at Strickland’s Shanac, Copper Canyon, Gradina, Obradov Potok and the more distant Jezerska Reka prospects comprise five separate parallel northwest-southeast trends. 

The distance between the Shanac and Copper Canyon trend is 680m, between Copper Canyon and Gradina is 900m and Gradina to Obradov Potok is about 1500m. 

Jezerska Reka shares the same northwest-southeast trend with the previous targets and lies a further 3.4km southwest of Obradov Potok. 

Obradov Potok comprises a cluster of combined geochemical and IP anomalies within a broad zone measuring about 2.5km northwest-southeast by 2km northeast-southwest. It was identified in 2020 by stream sediment sampling by Zlatna Reka Resource, a fully owned Strickland subsidiary.

Follow-up soil geochemical sampling in the following two years defined gold, arsenic, copper, molybdenum, silver, lead and zinc anomalism.

Ground geophysics undertaken last year included IP and gravity surveys, which revealed multiple shallow chargeability IP and density anomalies.

Subsequent exploration and data reviews identified outcropping evidence of hydrothermal alteration coinciding with shallow IP responses, resulting in the definition of multiple drill targets at Obradov Potok, which the company plans to test this year. 

Strickland Metal’s managing director Paul L’Herpiniere said: “Obradov Potok is an extremely large target area, with a similar-scale geochemical footprint as seen at both the Shanac and Medenovac mineralised systems, where we have inferred mineral resource estimates of 5.30Moz and 1.28Moz AuEq respectively. We have multiple holes planned to test the Obradov Potok system this year and look forward to continued drilling success and further resource accretion.”

Strickland’s Rogozna project is a large-scale gold-copper-lead-zinc-silver exploration project, comprising four exploration licences covering about 184 square kilometres in the Trepca mining district in southern Serbia, about 400km south of Belgrade, within the globally significant Tethyan Metallogenic Belt.

The Tethyan Metallogenic Belt extends from eastern Europe to SouthEast Asia. It formed from the convergence and collision of the Arabian, African and Indian tectonic plates when the ancient Tethys Ocean closed.

The project is owned by Strickland Metals through Zlatna Reka Resources. It currently hosts a combined resource of 7.40M ounces gold equivalent across three deposits at Shanac, Medenovac and Copper Canyon. 

The company has two rigs working to expand and upgrade the Shanac deposit, one is testing its Red Creek prospect, 500m west of Shanac, and another drill bit is spinning at the high-grade gold Gradina deposit. 

In addition to the new rig launched recently into the fray at Obradov Potok, the company will soon bring in a sixth rig to test the big Jezerska Reka porphyry target 3.5km southwest of Obradov Potok. 

Strickland remains extremely well-funded to deliver the biggest-ever exploration program at Rogozna in 2025, with $33.8M in cash and Northern Star Resources shares at the end of the December quarter last year.

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