White Cliff Minerals Ltd (ASX:WCN) will be on the ground at the promising Aucu Gold project in April, exploring the upper gold zone eastern extension which prompted investor excitement hitting average grades of 45g/t gold in 2015.
Aspirations at Aucu are high for White Cliff's managing director, Todd Hibberd, targeting 1 million ounces of gold in 2016, and multi-million ounces in the medium term, from the 89% owned deposit.
Aucu is located in the Kyrgyz Republic, which is open for business.
The high grade deposit outcrops at surface and visible (free) gold was discovered in 2015.
Providing the upside case, Aucu is open along strike for over 3 kilometres and is open at depth of greater than 100 metres to more than 1,000 metres.
The 2016 program follows approvals received from the Kyrgyz State Agency for Geology and Mining for the 2016 exploration season and earlier five year licence extension to the Aucu exploration license.
In the lead up to drilling, access roads will be opened to expose mineralised structures across the upper gold zone eastern extension where the high grade gold was discovered.
White Cliff will look to build on its 2014 gold discovery in the highly mineralised Tien Shen belt and increase the resource base in 2016 from 156,000 ounces at 4.2 g/t gold following a series of high grade intersections from drilling in 2015.
Metallurgical test work has seen a 99% overall recovery and a 88.6% gravity recoverable gold from work done to date on the ore.
Initial indications are that the ore will be free milling, have high gold liberation with low capital and energy costs.
Kyrgyz Republic open for business
With strong government support for new mining projects and the prime minister of Kyrgyz Republic opening mines this has improved the mining law, providing secure licence tenure.
This has seen a sharp lift in mining activity with three new mines opened in 2014-2015 alone.
These were the Ishtamberdy mine owned by LinBao Gold with 120,000 ounces of production, the Bozmychak mine of KAZ Minerals with 100,000 ounces of production and Taldybulak L. owned by Zinjin Gold with 120,000 ounces of production.
This is capped off by a favourable tax regime that is revenue based.
There is also established infrastructure with good access roads and close to regional mining hubs.
So 2016 promises to be a year of inflexion for White Cliff at Aucu, which undoubtedly has multi-million ounce high grade deposit potential with a big drill program set for Q2 2016.
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