Scotgold Resources Ltd said it was increasing its resource inventory in and around the Cononish Gold and Silver Mine where it expected first gold by the end of November 2020.
Exploration work has focused on extending the soil sampling grid at Cononish as well as extensions to the soil sampling grids over the Beinn Udlaidh and Inverchorachan prospects, which lie within the adjacent Glen Orchy Central and Inverliever East option areas respectively.
The company reported that it had identified gold and silver anomalies to the north east of Cononish Mine that are consistent with the ‘Mother Vein’ structure.
The Beinn Udlaidh prospect, where the sampling programme focused on delineating multiple open-ended anomalies, the highest gold value returned from current sampling is 15.15 parts per billion (ppb) compared with a previous high of 9.06ppb.
And the Inverchorachan prospect has shown encouraging values of 22ppb gold and 44 ppb silver.
Since January 2020, Scotgold geologists have continued to utilise the Ionic Leachi method to stream sediment sampling and soil sampling programmes.
A total of 508 samples have now been collected as part of the regional stream sediment sampling programme this year.
Samples have been collected from 10 of the 13 option areas with encouraging results returned over several drainage catchments effectively identifying targets for further follow-up.
Scotgold CEO, Richard Gray, said the company had reached an “exciting juncture” with its first gold expected from the Cononish Gold and Silver Mine by 30 November and had a growing portfolio of exploration anomalies and targets.
“We look forward to advancing our systematic exploration program, which holds out the promise of; increasing our mineral resources within reach of the Cononish Mine, identifying new orebodies at Beinn Udlaidh and Inverchorachan and of course making new discoveries over the rest of our extensive option area on the Dalradian belt.”