Explorer Zuleika Gold has uncovered further promising gold results from drilling and soil geochemistry work across the company’s large and highly prospective tenement package that sits less than 25km north-west of Kalgoorlie.
The results come from exploration at two of Zuleika’s projects across WA and are a shot in the arm for the company as it now eyes further work with the drill bit. The latest foray covered 17 RC holes for 2152 metres and 75 air-core holes for 3478m across its Credo project and five prospects at its namesake Zuleika project.
At the Credo gold project RC drilling returned encouraging intercepts including a 6m hit going 1.44 grams per tonne gold from 13m that contained a higher-grade interval of 3m at 2.63 g/t from 13m. In addition, a new shallow drilling target, coined Credo Well South, was also identified.
The new data builds on a maiden drill program from 2020 where Zuleika defined a mineral resource of 12,250 ounces of gold at a grade of 4.41 grams per tonne at Credo within its two advanced Credo Well and Credo Well North prospects. The project contains several key prospects and now with the inclusion of the newly identified Credo Well South prospect, it appears there might still be more ounces on the table.
Over at the company’s namesake Zuleika gold project 10km to the south-west, its exploration efforts returned some encouraging results across a host of prospects.
At the project’s Paradigm East target, a pair of RC drill holes were sunk in follow-up of a 4m hit going 4.93 grams per tonne gold from 71m including 1m at 18.48 g/t gold from 72m. The effort returned 1m at 2g/t gold from 77m.
At the Little T prospect, nine air-core drill holes targeting geochemical anomalies and a previous intercept of 9m at 0.59 g/t gold from 24 returned 4m-composite results grading up to 0.25 g/t gold from as shallow as 24m.
Similarly, at the Breakaway Dam prospect, 21 air-core drill holes and two RC drill holes were plunged in follow-up of an 11m hit running 1.3 g/t from 40m including 1m at 7.16 g/t from 40m. The best results included 3m at 0.96 g/t gold from 115m and 8m at 0.11 g/t from 62m. Intrigued by its haul of composite results across its prospects, the company plans to re-assay the combined samples at 1m intervals.
The final results from the Zuleika project came from the Grants Patch West prospect - located in between Paradigm East and Credo Well - a geochemical soil sampling program returned results up to 124 parts per billion gold that stood proud amongst an average background of 29 ppb. In addition at the company’s Zuleika North prospect soil sampling returned a 223ppb gold result within an average background of 15ppb.
Meanwhile, the company is still awaiting results from a 33-hole air core program for 1128m that was completed in August, 80km to the north at the company’s Menzies gold project. The round of holes intersected encouraging alteration and quartz veining after targeting anomalous auger results up to 70 parts per billion gold, reported in late 2020. Zuleika anticipates receiving the assays later this month.
The latest results build upon 30,000m of drilling completed in 2021 with the company planning to stack an additional 15,000m to the tally by the end of this year as it hunts for a significant discovery.
Zuleika Gold Managing Director, Jonathan Lea said: “With extensive areas of the Zuleika project now cleared following heritage surveys, drilling should proceed promptly for new zones of gold anomalism.”
“Zuleika Gold will continue actively exploring its current tenure as well as identifying new targets and new projects that offer the potential for significant discovery.”
Once heritage clearance has been received the company plans to kick off its next phase of air core drilling in October.
Zuleika has interests in six major gold projects in the Kalgoorlie region. It is earning a 75 per cent share of its namesake project, 50 per cent of its Credo project and 80 per cent of its Goongarrie and Menzies gold projects. In 2019, Zuleika struck a deal to earn into the Zuleika and Credo gold projects from Asra Minerals in exchange for $6m in exploration expenditure.
The company’s tenement package is the third largest holding within the world-class Zuleika Shear Zone behind ASX-listed Evolution Mining and domestic gold producer Norton Goldfields. To give an idea of its ‘world-class nature’, the prolific shear zone has reportedly produced about 20 million ounces of gold to date.
Today on the primary futures and options market, COMEX, gold futures contracts were changing hands for as little as US$1625 per ounce, down from a high of US$2091 on March 8.
Notably in January, Zuleika made headlines after veteran WA mining mogul Mark Creasy tipped $3m into the company at a 50 per cent premium to the company’s share price. At the time, the vote of confidence saw Zuleika shares more than double.
Zuleika Gold is currently trading at 1.9 cents on the ASX.
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