An ASX-listed mineral development and investment company says discovery of a suite of gold anomalies at its East Otago project sites has the potential to add to the mine life of Oceana- Gold’s neighbouring gold mine.
In a statement to the market, Cyclone Metals said trial geochemical sampling had successfully identified the anomalies at Mareburn and Macraes South, about 40km north of Dunedin.
Chairman Terry Donnelly said it was "very encouraging" to get positive responses to the maiden exploration programme that trialled Ionic Leach biochemistry, which gave the company a cost-effective and relatively quick way to define anomalies for the extensive landholding.
Cyclone Metals has interests in several exploration and mining projects and companies, providing exposure to copper, gold, iron ore, lithium, uranium and metal assets in Australia, Europe, Africa and South America.
It acquired the two Otago projects earlier this year following its takeover of Grand Port Resources, which owned and had applications over a diversified portfolio of gold, copper, nickel and other assets in New Zealand.
Grand Port’s projects covering 1140sqkm were all either near operating mines and facilities, or other resource companies.
The projects comprised Macraes South, Muirs, Mareburn, Longwood Range, Waikerikeri and Drybread, and all were considered under-explored by modern exploration methods.
Mareburn was 8km north of the producing Macraes gold mine and processing plant — New Zealand’s largest producing gold mine — and about 2km from the Coronation open pit, while Macraes South was to the south of the Macraes mine and processing plant.
According to The West Australian, the Ionic system was a proprietary surface geochemical technical programme developed by ALS global laboratories, a leader in the mineral analysis sector.
It was designed to detect metal responses across zones blanketed by transported material and was capable of picking up low-level traces of 61 elements including rare earths, base metals and pathfinder minerals.
said Cyclone, the system offered fewer false positives, exceptional repeatability and the definition of more focused, sharper gold
anomalies.
Only one other trial of the technique had been completed previously in New Zealand, in the Coromandel Peninsula area.
The results indicated it was a suitable exploration technique to advance the company’s New Zealand gold projects and to define drill targets.
An expanded programme had been designed and would be started "in the near future", it said.
