Alba Mineral Resources plc reported that its surface drilling programme has extended the strike of the Llechfraith gold target to 58 metres at the Clogau-St David’s gold mine, North Wales.
This in addition to extending 66 metres below the deepest previously worked zone at the area.
Since the start of February 2021, holes LL007 – LL009 have been drilled to bring the Phase 1 running total up to 981.6m over nine holes.
LL008 intercepted the target structure, including one intercept 1.49m thick which is one of the thickest vein intercepts in the entire programme.
LL009 intersected the projected pay shoot at the deepest and westernmost point so far.
It also showed an increased sulphide abundance in the lode
intercepts at 85.8 m (~1 m thick), 104.65 m (0.15 m thick) and 106.8 m (~0.6 m thick).
The junior miner is in the process of drawing up plans to access directly the newly identified lode structure at depth in order to assess and collect ore for future processing and mining.
Alba’s chief operating officer, Mark Austin: “All of our drilling to date has been aimed at providing us with critical geological and structural information on the lode systems previously mined at Clogau, so that we can assess if those same structures continue beyond the limits of the previously mined areas.
“To this end, the drilling at Llechfraith has been more successful than we could reasonably have anticipated: the physical attributes of the veins that we have intersected in our drill holes reflect the characteristics of the veins that were successfully mined in the past.
“While we should await the results of the drill core assays before reaching any preliminary conclusions, the significant dimensions of the Llechfraith Lode, as defined by the drilling so far completed, indicate that this could well be a significant contributor to future production at Clogau-St David’s.”
The company had originally planned to drill only three holes from the collar location but following positive results, Alba drilled 10 holes from the same location.
This allowed the significant dimensions of the lode system to be more clearly defined.
Final hole LL010, expected to be around 130m in length, will test the depth of the structure and aim to intercept the lode at around 100m below the existing workings.
Alba added that it was in discussion with contractors to assess opening up the Llechfraith Lode for preliminary bulk sampling and testwork via the company’s existing pilot processing plan.
They will also look at possible commercial-scale mining in the future.
Opening up the lode will additionally provide fresh exposure for the Alba’s technical team to assess further the geology of the pay shoot.