Aurion Resources (TSX-V:AU) Ltd has announced results from six holes of a winter drilling program in the Central Lapland Greenstone Belt in northern Finland.
The program is part of the Aurion-B2Gold joint venture (JV), which is operated by B2Gold. Some 8,000 metres (m) of diamond core drilling has been completed during the winter campaign.
The drilling confirmed gold mineralization at depth in the Helmi target and further gold mineralized intervals in the Helmi-Kutuvuoma trend, the company said.
"The gold intersects at greater depths at Helmi and the identification of further gold mineralized zones along the Helmi-Kutuvuoma trend expand the mineralized footprint, provide further support to the geological understanding and enhance the discovery potential along the over 8 km long prospective structural corridor," Aurion CEO Matti Talikka said in a statement. "We are looking forward to receiving further results from the recently completed 2022/2023 winter drilling program."
At Helmi, drill hole IKK22043 intersected 1.07 grams per ton (g/t) of gold over 57.30m from 360.80m and is a scissor hole to IKK22038 that returned 0.82 g/t gold over 108.10m from 286.30m. IKK22043 confirmed the depth extensions and provided further information on the geometry of one of the main mineralized lenses.
The full results can be found here.
Looking ahead, the planned JV budget for 2023 is C$10.4 million, which is B2Gold's largest greenfield exploration budget outside western Africa, according to a statement. Aurion said it is fully financed to contribute its 30% share of the planned expenditure, which includes a minimum of 10,500m of diamond core drilling in various target areas.
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