Ariana Resources’ new drilling at Kizilcukur in Turkey is designed to provide confidence in the vein resources, says house broker WH Ireland.
The programme comes ahead of the design of a series of conventional open pits with ore trucked to the existing Kiziltepe plant, which is currently slated for closure in 2025.
WHI notes that the whole Sindirgi Gold Corridor, which contains Kiziltepe and Kizilcukur is prospective for further epithermal veins, and with an established plant the hurdle to add further resources is lowered.
“With trial mining already undertaken at Kizilcukur, if a reserve can be defined from the existing resource we anticipate Ariana would have few problems in getting a licence to operate.”
The broker’s fair value estimate for Ariana is 5.5p against a current market price of 2.4p.