Alba reports positive results from Clogau-St David's drilling

Mineral exploration and development company Alba Mineral Resources reported the assay results from the maiden drilling campaign at the Clogau-St David's Gold Mine in North Wales on Tuesday.

The AIM-traded firm said the objective of the drilling was to identify possible gold-bearing extensions to one particular target area at Clogau, being the Llechfraith mine workings.

It said the drilling successfully intersected a quartz vein sequence up to some 25 metres below the known historical mine workings.

In addition to that confirmation of the continuity of the mined shear zone-hosted quartz vein structure at depth, the assay results also confirmed the presence within the drill core of gold mineralisation above the analytical detection limit.

Looking at the highlights, Alba said drillhole GMOW002 returned assay results of up to 0.08 grams of gold per tonne, and drillhole GMOW003 returned assay results up to 0.09 grams of gold per tonne, with both intersections being hosted within shear zone-hosted quartz veining.

Alba said those results indicated that a gold-bearing system could exist within the quartz vein sequence at depth.

The board said the results gave it confidence to begin follow-up work at the Llechfraith mine area, in a bid to locate continuations of the previously mined historic gold shoots.

It said the company was is in the process of refining its overall 2020 work programme, which was expected to include a trenching programme across some of the 10 new regional gold targets which it had identified across the Dolgellau Gold Belt.

“As we have previously reported, limited mining was most recently undertaken at the Llechfraith mine area in the 1980s, with visible gold being reported along the lowest worked level,” said executive chairman George Frangeskides.

“This led us to embark on a short maiden drilling programme late last year, focused on this single target zone.

“The primary objective of the drilling was to confirm the presence of gold-bearing structures in areas that have never been previously mined, and this has undoubtedly been achieved.”

Frangeskides said that, while the assays themselves had not returned high-grade results, that was to be expected due to the “nuggety effect” of the Clogau gold system, where gold was known to occur in discrete, high-grade pods, as well as due to the limited amount of drilling undertaken.

“Given the drilling has firmly established that we are in the right structure, our team is now focused on refining our exploration activities within the Llechfraith mine area, at the same time as finalising our work programme across the large number of other gold targets within our project area.

“One route now being considered for Llechfraith is the dewatering of the No.4 Level so that our technical team can directly access those zones where visible gold was reported in the 1980s.”

At 1355 GMT, shares in Alba Mineral Resources were up 1.43% at 0.14p.