Closely followed UK-listed gold miner Greatland Gold (LSE:GGP) has disclosed interesting new results at its Scallywag exploration site. which it says show broad geochemical anomalism, evidence of further mineralising systems. This means the area would bear further investigation, the miner said this morning.
The 2021 drilling programme and ground EM survey at Scallywag is the second stage of a comprehensive exploration programme initiated at Scallywag and comprised seven holes for 3,863 metres, testing the Swan, Barbossa West, Architeuthis and Teach targets.
What is Greatland Gold’s Scallywag project?
Exploration work at Scallywag is focused on the discovery of intrusion-related gold-copper deposits, similar to those found at Greatland Gold’s Havieron, Telfer and Winu sites in Australia. Scally wag is located in Paterson Province, in Western Australia. It is 100% owned by Greatland Gold and sits next to its Havieron mining lease. It contains a further 20km of strike of the Yeneena Group metasediments.
Greatland Gold carried out some initial exploration on the site in 2020 and at the time said it had identified a number of compelling targets in the area. The current field season is following up on these.
Results from Scallywag
Among the results were 2.6m @ 0.19g/t Au from 35.4m AND 3m @ 0.19g/t Au from 430m in Swan hole SWD001, associated with broad zones of strongly anomalous Bi-Te-Sb pathfinders. Greatland Gold also found anomalous gold and pathfindersin three further holes at the Swan and Barbossa West prospects, including 7m @ 0.10g/t Au from 18m in Swan hole SWD003 and 1m @ 0.48g/t Au from 384m in Swan hole SWD002.
A ground EM survey was completed, identifying eight promising EM conductor plates in four targets, including two plates adjacent to Swan hole SWD001 above, representing potential higher grade mineralisation proximal to the anomalism identified at Swan to date.
Greatland Gold said its 2022 exploration drill programme was designed to test ground EM conductors at Pearl, Swan and Swan East. Surface geochemistry in suitable areas involving Ultra Fine Fraction geochemistry is also planned.
“Highly encouraging” gold mineralisation
There is an ongoing review of the 2020 airborne electro-magnetic survey, to identify further “Pearl” like aerial EM anomalies for ground EM follow-up. Further analysis of the drilling results from 2021 and 2020 is being carried out, and integration into ongoing basin-wide geophysical and geological modelling to drive further targeting.
“Gold mineralisation has been intercepted in four of the seven holes reported, which is highly encouraging,” said Greatland Gold CEO Shaun Day. “These results, together with identifying several new conductor targets from the ground EM programme and results from the 2020 work, increases our confidence regarding the prospectivity for intrusion related and other styles of mineralised systems at Scallywag.”
Day said that in addition to identifying prospective drill targets for Greatland Gold’s 2022 drill program, the data set builds the miner’s understanding of the regional and prospect scale geology as it continues to develop and refine its targeting strategy ahead of its 2022 exploration programmes.
Greatland Gold will need to come up with something exciting soon: shares in the AIM miner have been on a slide, with the one year picture showing shares in the miner dropping consistently from around 24p to this the 13p area this week. Relative strength in the stock is down 36% over the last year, and volumes are down 12.9%.
