BRITISH miner, Kavango Resources Plc, has identified several new significant gold deposits during its ongoing drilling campaign at the Hillside Gold Project located near Bulawayo.
Kavango has three projects in Zimbabwe, with the firm focusing on its most promising project, Hillside, which consists 44 gold claims, covering 503 hectares.
The Hillside Project is divided into six prospects.
Prospect one, however, has shown the most potential for a significant gold discovery, according to initial drilling efforts.
“Kavango Resources plc, the Southern Africa-focused metals exploration and gold production company, is pleased to announce further significant gold intercepts at the Prospect 4 Steenbok Target (Steenbok) in the Hillside Project (Hillside), Zimbabwe,” Kavango said in a statement.
“Kavango completed a further 3 232m of diamond drilling at Steenbok, which built upon the success of Hole SKDD001. Seven of the eight holes drilled intersected encouraging gold mineralisation.
“In total, 69 significant gold intersections were used with a cut-off grade of 0,7g/t Au (the ‘significant intersections’). Of these, there were 41 intersections with grade >1g/t.”
Kavango said that in parallel to drilling, the miner employed a firm of specialist structural geologists to review the geological setting at Steenbok.
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“Based upon the extent of the claims, geological mapping and the structural review, the company believes the strike length at Steenbok is up to 1,5km long and open in both directions,” Kavango said.
The firm of specialist structural geologists, Murgana Geological Consulting Limited, reviewed the structural settings across the Hillside Project and concluded that the ore mineralisation is structurally controlled.
Murgana also revealed that the control was through a network of shear zones that were acting not only as feeders but also as traps for the hydrothermal alteration and related mineralisation.
Kavango is now preparing to follow up exploration and drill programmes at Steenbok, including geotechnical drilling to assess rock competency and support possible future mining operations.
“As Kavango moves towards much more significant mining, these results from Steenbok mark a highly encouraging continuation of our work in this emerging gold system. We deliberately targeted 400m of strike and are delighted to confirm this portion is gold mineralised throughout and open in both directions,” Kavango chief executive officer Ben Turney said.
“With strong gold grades encountered in 6 of the 7 holes we drilled and confirmation of the structural controls, we are making real progress in building a robust geological model. Following additional work by Murgana, it appears that the strike length at Steenbok is up to 1,5km long and open in both directions.”
He said the comparison with gold systems seen in Australia was exciting and validated the miner’s ongoing strategy.
“We look forward to commencing geotechnical drilling shortly as we move towards a potential development decision,” Turney said.
To improve operational clarity, Kavango has reverted to using the historic names of the first four gold prospects at its Hillside Project in southern Zimbabwe.
The names — Bill’s Luck, Britain, Nightshift and Steenbok — apply to the previous internal references of Prospect 1, 2, 3 and 4, respectively.
These names reflect the company’s advancing geological understanding of Hillside and will now be adopted in all technical reporting, investor updates and operational planning.
Kavango’s other two mining projects are the Nara Gold and Leopard Projects.
