www.lydianinternational.co.uk
Lydian International is a mineral exploration and development company with expertise and a proven track record in discovering and developing new gold projects in unfamiliar and frontier settings. The Company is currently focussed on developing its Amulsar gold discovery in southern Armenia. The Amulsar project was a new discovery made by Lydian in 2006 and currently hosts a global resource of 3.2M ounces after its resource update in January 2012. This resource update comprises a total of 1.7 million ounces gold in the indicated category and 0.6 million ounces gold in inferred category (using a 0.4g/t cut-off) from the contiguous Tigranes and Artavasdes areas and 0.5 million ounces gold in the indicated category and 0.4 million ounces inferred category from the Erato prospect which is located approximately 900 meters to the north of Tigranes-Artavasdes. The project remains open in all directions and is currently advancing towards Bankable Feasibility with full production due in the first half of 2014.
Lydian’s latest batch of results confirm ongoing potential to upgrade 1.4 million ounce Amulsar Gold
European focused gold exploration and development company Lydian International (TSX:LYD) continues to release assays from drilling at a steady clip, and with each batch of results, the company furthers its conviction that it has discovered a gold project with development written all over it.
Lydian has already defined a CIM (Canadian Institute of Mining) compliant inferred resource of 1.4 million ounces averaging 0.9 grams per tonne gold, but this year’s drilling is set to not only expand the size of the resource through step out drilling, but also increase the confidence in the resource through extensive infill drilling. Lydian has also been targeting higher grade zones within the project, which could significantly impact on the pre-feasibility results when completed.
The market has taken notice too, pushing shares in the company from the CDN$1.20 mark to a around $1.80 today.
Amulsar sits within the Tethyan fold belt, one of the principal geological features in the northern hemisphere which extends from Central Europe and northern Africa across Turkey and the Middle East to the Himalayas and then on to the Far East and Indonesia. Stretching as it does across so many countries and cultures, many of which have been centres of political and geological upheaval over the centuries, the Tethyan belt is perhaps the least explored of all the earth’s major geological systems.
Lydian’s geologists originally snapped up the Amulsar licence in Armenia in 2006 after spotting several signatures at surface that caught their attention while driving through the country. By 2008 Lydian confirmed a grass roots gold discovery. Since 2008, the focus has been on ever larger drill programs and preliminary metallurgical test-work, which have both suggested Amulsar can host a low cost open pit, heap leach mine.
Today’s drill results further confirmed the potential of Amulsar. Reverse circulation hole RCA-212 cut 86 meters averaging 2.7 grams per tonne gold from the Artavasdes area of the project, and only 80 meters from RCA-195 where the company hit 84 meters averaging 4.9 grams per tonne gold.
Other significant results included infill holes RCA-208 (95m at 1.3g/t gold) and RCA- 193 (74m at 1.4g/t gold).
"Once again these results are a good example of what we are trying to achieve in the resource upgrade and extension components of this year's drilling program at Amulsar" said Dr Tim Coughlin, Lydian's President and CEO. "Systematic step-out drilling is extending the known limits of the resource towards the northwest and southwest and it is gratifying to see that we are now successfully predicting the likely extensions of higher grade zones such as the interpreted "feeder" at Artavasdes".
