Mako Gold has extended the footprint of its Tchaga gold discovery in northern Cote d’Ivoire in Africa, blowing out the strike length of the high-grade discovery to more than 1.6km. The company’s preliminary results from its latest round of shallow RC drilling include 3m at 4.59 g/t gold and 10 metres at 1.1 g/t gold.
Mako’s current drilling program is designed to extend and infill the drill pattern at the main Tchaga discovery and to test the Tchaga North prospect, which hasn’t been worked on since 2018. Drilling has confirmed the continuity of mineralisation between the two zones and that it remains open along strike.
Mako Gold’s Managing Director, Peter Ledwidge said:
“We are pleased to have extended the gold mineralised zone on the Tchaga Prospect by a further 250m north, along strike, and to have intersected a modest zone of mineralisation 80m south of our 2018 positive drill results on Tchaga North. Both areas will be subject to further drilling.
“In certain areas where we intersected modest gold mineralisation, we believe that we may be on the edge of one of the high-grade plunging mineralised shoots. Our geologists on the ground have not yet finished logging the 14 DD holes and once the core is logged, split and the assays received, we should be able to adapt our drilling directions to increase our chances of intersecting the high-grade mineralised shoots.”
Mako Gold’s Tchaga discovery lies within the Napie project in the north of Cote d’Ivoire. The project is hosted by a regional scale Birimian greenstone belt, which host a number of world-class gold deposits scattered throughout the West African country.
These include Barrick’s 4.9Moz Tongon gold deposit to the north of Napie and Tietto’s 2.2Moz Abujar gold deposit to the south.
The Napie project is held by Mako through a joint venture with Perseus Mining, with the company having already earned a 51 per cent interest in the project with the capacity to earn up to 75 per cent by advancing Napie through to feasibility.
The project has excellent access to infrastructure with tarred roads to site and reticulated power running through its tenure. The project is serviced from regional centre of Korhogo, the fifth largest city in Cote d’Ivoire, around 15 km to the north of the discovery. Napie is composed of a single granted tenement extending over more than 220 square kilometres of greenstone which also covers 30km of the gold-bearing Tchaga Shear.
Mako’s current focus is the Tchaga discovery in the central tenement area where shallow drilling has previously unearthed a plethora of wide, high-grade drill intercepts including 13m at 20.82 g/t gold from 32m,14m at 5.46 g/t gold from surface and 36m at 3.09 g/t gold from 43m down hole.
The recent 30 hole reverse circulation, or ‘RC’ drill program tested a range of targets throughout the Tchaga prospect area, with nine holes going into targets adjacent to the developing resource target and a further three testing the Tchaga North target – the results from the first 17 drill holes have now been reported by the company.
Initial results from within the resource area include the afore mentioned intercepts in addition to 5m at 2.34 g/t from 55m and 4m at 2.44 g/t gold from 88m.
Drilling from Tchaga North also returned anomalous intercepts including 3m at 3.96 g/t gold from 55m. The balance of the RC, 13 holes in total, have been sampled with assays from this drilling expected in the first half of October 2020.
The current drilling program has extended the envelope of mineralisation at Tchaga by an additional 250m to the north and demonstrates the continuity of the auriferous shear over more than 1.6km of strike. The company says ongoing structural analysis of its diamond drilling indicates that the high-grade gold mineralisation within the shear may be hosted by steeply plunging southwest oriented shoots. This shrewd reinterpretation of the ore system will likely result in drilling orientations changing to intersect the gold-bearing lodes at an optimum angle for resource definition.
Mako currently has 14 diamond drill holes being logged and sampled before heading into the lab later in the week. The diamond rig is expected to continue working at Tchaga 24/7 leading up to the end of 2020 as the company races to define its maiden resource for the high-grade prospect.
Mako now looks set to deliver constant news flow in the run up to Christmas courtesy of the $10 million that it banked recently via an oversubscribed capital raising late last month.
With two rigs on site now drilling out both existing resources and a wealth of new targets, Mako is well placed to continue its lucrative gold hunt in West Africa.
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By Matt Birney
