Thick gold hits shine through for Aurum in West Africa

Aurum Resources has revealed a glimmering suite of wide gold hits from a recent diamond drilling campaign at its Boundiali project in West Africa’s Côte d'Ivoire – peaking at 90m going 1.16 grams per tonne from 143m.

The company’s latest assay collection also includes 59m at 1.42g/t gold from 68m with 13m at 3.92g/t and 23m at 1.36g/t from 293m featuring a 5m chunk going a solid 3.32g/t. Pointing to an impressive consistency at Boundiali, other new gold hits include 43m at 0.96g/t from 321m with a 7m chunk grading 1.73g/t, 9m going 2.32g/t from 109m including a 1m section at a solid 16.82 g/t, 90m at 1.16g/t from 143m containing 51m going 1.04g/t and 35m grading 1.47g/t.

Management says some sections of the diamond core contain coarse “visible gold” and it is working towards landing on the best methods to assay the paydirt. That may involve the use of photon assay to assess the chunky gold through bigger sample sizes. 

Aurum Resources managing director Caigen Wang said: “It is very encouraging to see these new wide gold intercepts underneath earlier results such as 73m @ 2.15g/t Au from 172m. Given the encouraging results to date we are confident to add new targets on the BD and BM tenements whilst we drill towards our target of delivering inaugural JORC resources by late 2024.”

Drilling at Boundiali is ongoing and Aurum says the next batch of assays from 12 more drillholes are due back in the next two days. With 30,000m of drilling planned for this year and three rigs digging at 4000m a month, anticipation is likely to build around just what the coming batches of assays may show.

The latest holes totalling 940m were drilled about 60m downdip from previous gold hits and are the deepest on the project to date. Notably, management says the drilling results have confirmed the gold system is open and continues at depth.

BD Target 1 is a 1.3km-long by 1km-wide prospect nested within a more extensive 13km-by-3km gold mineralised corridor, much of which is yet to see the drill bit. And companies working neighbouring ground have seen gold grades hold up during production within projects that are more mature than Boundiali.

Perseus Mining has a 1.4-million-ounce gold resource at its Sissingue mine about 50km along strike to the north of Boundiali. About 120km along strike to the south of Boundiali, Montage Gold’s Koné project contains 4 million ounces.

Aurum says it is yet to drill-test multiple gold targets that have been defined within its BM tenement from extensive gold-in-soil anomalism and artisanal pits associated with a north-south trend of metasediments and granites.

With the Australian gold price still rising hard today to sit at more than a glittering $3560 per ounce, it is far from a terrible time to be drilling thick, shallow gold orebodies. And Aurum is expected to provide a solid flow of more Boundiali assays to the market in the coming months.

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