Avesoro begins 14,000 metre diamond drilling campaign at New Liberty

West Africa-focussed gold producer Avesoro Resources announced on Friday that four diamond drill rigs have been mobilised to its wholly-owned New Liberty Gold Mine, and have commenced a 14,000 metre diamond core drilling campaign.

The AIM-traded firm said the campaign was targeting an area of the New Liberty resource model containing an inferred mineral resource of some 3.5Mt, with a mean grade of 2.8g/t Au and containing 315koz of gold.

It said that inferred material was located within and below the current pit design, and was within the open pit reporting limits, but due to its resource classification was currently treated as waste in the mineral resource announced by the company on 11 October.

The objective of the 46-hole infill drilling programme was to increase confidence in the continuity of the ore body and upgrade the classification of a proportion of the inferred material to an indicated mineral resource, and thereby increase the tonnage of mineralisation that could be converted to a mineral reserve and included in the economic model as required by NI 43-101.

It anticipated that the drilling programme would be completed during the first quarter of 2018, at which time the company would start work on an updated mineral resource and reserve statement.

“I am pleased to announce the start of this infill drilling programme at New Liberty,” said Avesoro CEO Serhan Umurhan.

“We expect drilling operations to be completed during Q1 2018 and I look forward to updating shareholders on the progress of this campaign which we believe has the potential to increase the mine life and significantly add to the value of New Liberty.”