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Anglo-African Minerals extends exploration concessions in Guinea

Last updated: 09:16 02 Mar 2010 GMT, First published: 10:16 02 Mar 2010 GMT

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Anglo-African Minerals (FSE:AMQ) announced it has extended all nine of its exploration concessions in Guinea, West Africa, for a further two years. The company is exploring a 1,050 square kilometres area, known for its "rich and rewarding potential", for gold, diamonds, iron ore and copper.

Anglo-African said that the extensions further bolster its considerable portfolio. Five of the concessions are for gold properties - Kouroussa, Macenta, Kankan and two concessions on the southern bank of the Tinkisso River.

At the Kouroussa concession a large number of artisanal miners work in the area, for about 5km along a narrow north-south trending ridge of “Birimian volcanic”, which form the prominent Niandian Range. The Macenta concession is located in the Diani Valley.

Anglo-African said that the Kankan gold concession is highly promising, noting that the area is “underlain by the Birimian Siguiri formation which contains small mafic-ultramafic and granitic intrusions along a strong regional scale north north-eastern trending shear zone”. Also, in other parts of the Siguiri Basin this zone has proved to be a favourable geological setting for gold mineralisation, the company stated.

At the Tinkisso river, the company has two adjacent concession areas and according to Anglo-African, the area is known to carry alluvial gold, which has been extensively worked by artisanal miners, and additionally there are known quartz-vein occurrences to the north of the concession area.

Also among the extended concessions are two diamond properties, an iron-ore property and a copper property.

The Kindia Diamond concession is located in an area known historically for artisanal diamond mining. The company highlighted that the area is known to host paleo-placer deposits. The second diamond concession, the Kissidougou Diamond Permit lies on the western fringe of the ‘diamond triangle’ about 70km west of the Aredor diamond mine.

The iron-ore concession is located South-West of the town of Kissidougou in south-east Guinea. Anglo-African noted that a number of major iron-ore exploration programmes are currently underway in the surrounding area, which is underlain by “Archean granite-gneiss”. Finally, the Faranah Copper concession area hosts “Archean terrane” and intrusions of ultramafic rocks, which are known to be associated with base metals.

The Dublin-incorporated Anglo-African was formed in 2008 to acquire exploration properties in Guinea. In December 2009, the company listing on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. According to Anglo-African, Guinea is richly endowed with mineral resources, “most of which remain relatively unexploited compared to other countries in the region.”

The company highlights that the country contains the world’s largest known bauxite reserves, considerable iron ore deposits, more than 10Moz of known gold reserves, more than 30M carats of diamonds, as well as copper, uranium, nickel and other base metals.

“Mining provides 20% of Guinea’s gross domestic product, 30% of government revenues and 80% of export revenues. Guinea is the world’s second largest producer of bauxite and also exports alumina, gold and diamonds. There is widespread small-scale artisanal production of gold and diamonds," the group added.

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