Solomon Gold gets busy with the drill bit on newly acquired ground in Australia

Solomon Gold (AIM: SOLG) has completed the acquisition of Central Minerals following approval from D'Aguilar Gold (ASX: DGR) shareholders in an EGM in Australia earlier today.

The acquisition was initially proposed in December 2009, along-side the now complete Acapulco Mining takeover.  Solomon Gold issued 37.2m shares as consideration for the deal, plus it has today paid AUD$1m in cash with a further AUD$1m to be paid in respect of a 12 month 10% coupon bearing convertible note.

The Central Minerals transaction brings exploration licences covering 3,670km2 over a strike length of 200km on the eastern margin of the Permian Triassic Bowen Basin in central Queensland. The main asset within the licences is the Rannes Project, a gold prospect, where Solomon Gold is targeting a resource of 1 million ounces of gold.

According to Solomon Gold, Rannes exhibits structures and geochemistry similar to the Carlin and Battle Mountain trend in Nevada USA, which is one of the world's most prolific gold belts having resources and historic production of 200m oz gold.

Five prospects in the Rannes Central area have been subject to first pass drilling by Central Minerals in the past, and additional surface soil, stream and rock sampling have identified a further thirteen gold targets, five of which are considered to be high order and located close to the drilled prospects.

Meanwhile, exploration work recently conducted on the Mt Perry and Normanby properties, which came into the company through the Acapulco Mining acquisition, indicate the potential for 500,000 ounce gold targets at both the Chinamans and Regans prospect areas. 

Drilling at Welcome Reef (part of Mt Perry Project) returned grades of up to 1 meter averaging 25.9 grams per tonne (g/t) gold.  The reef is open to the west and appears to be continuous with intersections of 2m at 9.6g/t gold, which was reported 200m to the south east.

The Spring Creek zone, 2km north-west of the Welcome, will be drilled this quarter.

Solomon has also begun diamond core drilling at the Regans prospect, 7km to the north-west of Chinamans. Results for the top part of the first hole have already been received and it confirms the presence of a large mineralised breccia system, the company said. At Regan’s Solomon is targeting a large disseminated sulphide and gold orebody.

Solomon has also identified the previously mined New Moonta reef as having potential for high grade polymetallic copper gold silver resources.  The company said the deposit may be exploited in an underground re-development of the New Moonta Mine.

Moreover, through the re-interpretation of the EM and Magnetic data across the Mt. Perry tenements, Solomon has identified 17 resistors that may represent porphyry targets.

On the Normanby property a small drill rig was used to test a number of sites on the site main prospect, Mt Flat Top. The first economic intercepts were returned indicating a zone approximately 20m true width and averaging 1.2gpt gold and 0.1% copper, smaller higher grade intervals are also present.

Surrounding Mt Flat Top, the company's exploration licences cover a zone of structures and porphyry intrusives on a 30km long belt of targets, including Mt. Flat top. Solomon is investigating a number of targets on this belt. This belt lies on a trend of mineralisation which hosts the 1million ounce Mt Carlton project, 30km to the north-west.