Alba Mineral Resources plc said it had found a significant 2.1-metre wide quartz vein at the end of the first phase of its surface trenching programme at Dolgellau gold exploration project in North Wales.
The metals and minerals mining company has been conducting surface trenching over one of ten separate target areas.
A total eight trenches were completed covering 278.4 metres with the quartz vein found in trench 10. Alba said the find was comparable to the widths of the worked veins in the Clogau-St David’s Gold Mine.
The company took 49 samples including 17 quartz vein samples. Three minor quartz veins (up to 0.3m wide) were found in trenches 1 and 3 hosted by greenstone sills and containing clasts of greenstone sill and soft black material assumed to be altered Clogau shale.
“This first phase of our surface trenching campaign has been a real success,” said Alba’s executive chairman George Frangeskides.
| Trench No. | Length (m) | Width (m) | Azimuth |
| 1 | 61 | 1.4 | 140 |
| 2 | 58 | 1.4 | 120 |
| 3 | 47 | 1.4 | 135 |
| 4 | 39.5 | 1.4 | 140 |
| 5 | 22.3 | 1.4 | 150 |
| 7 | 19.5 | 1.4 | 110 |
| 9 | 20.1 | 1.4 | 146 |
| 10 | 11 | 1.4 | 140 |
“We have uncovered several quartz veins, including one over two metres in width. Follow-up work in 2021 will be designed to ascertain the full extent of the vein, and to further sample it for its gold content.
“This work we are carrying out in the Dolgellau Gold Field, to discover new gold deposits away from the Clogau-St David’s and Gwynfynydd Gold Mines, should be seen as a separate exercise to the work we are doing to bring those mines back into production, but is certainly no less exciting.”
Alba has 100% ownership of the Dolgellau project covering a 26km geological formation in North Wales and incorporating Clogau-St David’s and Gwynfynydd gold mines.
The trenching area is located 1.2 km east of the Clogau-St David’s Gold Mine and 4.2 km northwest of Dolgellau.
Alba Mineral Resources’ other interests lie in Ireland (zinc-lead), Greenland (ilmenite, iron ore, graphite, copper-cobalt-gold) and Surrey (oil and gas investments).