White Cliff Minerals (ASX:WCN) continues the evolution of its Aucu gold discovery into perhaps one of the major new global deposits with confirmation that test work on drill samples have gold recoveries of 99% and high gravity gold averages of 89%.
The Aucu gold project is located in the western part of the Tien Shan Belt in the Kyrgyz Republic.
The work was based on the current JORC resource which metallurgical test work performed on the samples transported to Bureau Veritas Minerals Laboratory in Perth shows a standard processing route for the project.
The average grade of the metallurgical composites for the JORC resource is 7.38 g/t gold.
The gold ounces defined at Aucu will increase in 2016 as White Cliff's managing director, Todd Hibberd, looks to deliver a significant resource capable of being mined as a low cost open pit operation.
Current resource is 1.2 million tonnes at 4.2g/t for 156,000 ounces of gold.
So White Cliff will now fast track a diamond and reverse circulation drilling of the high grade and laterally extensive Upper Gold Zone with the objective of defining a major resource by the end of 2016.
Investors may recall that in 2015 exploration demonstrated that visible gold can literally be panned from outcrop and there are multiple mineralised shear zones that extend for kilometres.
Average gold intersections from 2015 drilling were greater than 30 g/t gold over a 400 metres strike length and all intersections were shallower than 100 metres depth.
The resource is hence open along strike and at depth.
The large exploration area is still 90% undrilled and the size of the various operating mines within a 50 kilometres radius, including Charaat Gold’s (AIM:CGH) 6-million-ounce Charaat mine and Fortune LLC’s 5-million-ounce Ishtamberdy mine provides the case for optimism of a major deposit in the making.
The project also benefits from a government supportive of developing new mines, good infrastructure and cheap power cost of U.S. 2 cents/Kwh and many local operating mines.
Analysis
The 2016 drill program will be fascinating to watch at it unfolds with so many targets as White Cliff focuses on the high grade zone than can be mined as a low cost open pit operation.
White Cliff remains one of our top gold picks for 2016.
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