Greatland Gold upbeat on remaining Scallywag drilling results

Precious and base metals exploration and development company Greatland Gold announced the results of the remaining four drill holes from the 2020 drilling campaign at its wholly-owned Scallywag licence on Monday.

The AIM-traded firm said it had identified multiple new targets to conduct further drill testing, with its 2021 drilling in the Paterson region expected to start in the coming weeks.

It said the Scallywag drill programme was the first stage of an extended drilling programme across its 100%-owned licences and the Juri joint venture.

During 2020, a total of seven drill holes were completed for 3,761 metres, testing targets at the Kraken, London and Blackbeard prospects.

Assay results had now been received for the remaining four holes, being LOD002, LOD003, KRD002 and KRD003, in addition to the results of the first three holes released on 20 January.

The board said the drill results provided further evidence of pathfinder element anomalism potentially distal to intrusion-related mineralised systems, and potentially along strike of the current drilling

At the Kraken target, assay and logging confirmed the intersection of prospective target lithologies and pathfinder element anomalies including silver, copper, bismuth and lead

Ongoing geological interpretation, assisted by drill information and regional aeromagnetics, had identified multiple new targets within the Scallywag licence

Those new targets included ‘Architeuthis’, a 600 metre-long magnetic anomaly one kilometre north of Kraken and nine kilometres north-west along strike of Havieron, and which could represent primary mineralisation along the Scallywag synform.

At the London target, initial sample results reported very high-grade intercepts of silver, copper and tungsten results of 872 parts per million silver, 1137 parts per million copper and more than 2000 parts per million tungsten in the 349 to 350 metre interval in LOD003.

Those results were suspected to be contamination, and as a result, prior to public release, check resampling and analysis was undertaken of washed 1/4 core, and the results confirmed.

Notwithstanding the confirmation, it remained probable that the interval could be caused by contamination and not representative of the rock mass, the board warned.

Greatland said it intended to confirm whether it could be the result of downhole contamination, with follow-up drilling scheduled for the upcoming drill programme.

Looking ahead, the board said a staged exploration programme was set to methodically drill test a series of targets based on modern geological, gravity, magnetic and recently=collected airborne electromagnetic datasets.

Targets within Scallywag included the Swan, Teach and Architeuthis, and targets within the Juri joint venture included the existing Goliath, Outamind, Los Diablos and Parlay, as well as newly-defined airborne electromagnetic targets within the Black Hills area, and Tama, N5 and A9 in the Paterson Range East area.

Drilling was expected to be ongoing throughout the 2021 and 2022 field seasons.

“We may only be in the first stages of an extensive drilling programme, yet these results provide further evidence that the Scallywag licence is prospective for intrusion-related mineralised systems,” said chief executive officer Shaun Day.

“In particular, it is very pleasing that initial targets have once more intersected pathfinder elements associated with systems seen nearby at Havieron and Telfer, and regionally at Winu.

“Greatland has established a proven approach to exploration that brought it much success at Havieron - drill selective targets, analyse the information and refine targets to unlock value from our projects.”

Day said that with the “encouraging” initial drill results, the company had a “significantly enhanced” understanding of Scallywag's geology and was able to identify multiple compelling targets that merited follow-up drilling in the coming weeks and months, particularly Swan, Teach and Architeuthis.

“These will form an important part of the comprehensive exploration campaign we are conducting across our 100% licences and our Juri joint venture.”

At 0828 BST, shares in Greatland Gold were up 0.85% at 22.19p.