Alba Mineral Resources plc said it had restarted surface drilling at its Clogau-St David’s Gold Mine in North Wales.
The critical minerals and precious metals company added it had processed a small bulk sample at a third-party processing facility and results confirmed the production of a 20.7 grams per tonne (g/t) gold concentrate.
Alba also announced that its dedicated pilot processing plant is expected to be operational next Monday (11 January), continuing throughout the first quarter of 2021, and will process some 36 tonne bulk sample collected during September and October 2020.
The Phase 1 surface drilling campaign involved drilling hole LL004 to 62.4 metres. The company called the end of the hole before intersecting the expected quartz zone due to difficult ground conditions.
Drilling contractors are preparing the drill collar for LL005 whose trajectory will be steeper (-55°) to obtain a deeper lode intersection around 20m below the intersections obtained in LL001-003.
Alba’s executive chairman George Frangeskides said that the company was greatly encouraged by the good recoveries of gold to concentrate.
“While drill hole LL004 encountered difficult ground, this is part and parcel of exploration drilling.
“We now move onto the planned deeper holes, LL005 and LL006, to test the depth extent of the new vein system which we believe we have identified in holes LL001-003, each of which intersected significant quartz veins some 30 metres below the deepest previously worked zone at the Llechfraith mine area.”
Alba Mineral Resources also has interests in Ireland (zinc-lead), Greenland (ilmenite, iron ore, graphite, copper-cobalt-gold) and Surrey (oil and gas investments).