White Cliff Minerals Ltd (ASX:WCN) has commenced field exploration targeting a 45 g/t gold zone at its 89% owned Aucu gold deposit in the Kyrgyz Republic.
The company has a maiden resource at Aucu of 1.15 million tonnes grading 4.2 g/t gold for 156,000 ounces of contained gold at a 1 g/t gold cut off.
A bulldozer is currently clearing the access road prior to the establishment of the field camp.
Diamond drilling will commence in mid-May once mapping of exposed gold lodes allow finalisation of drill hole positions.
Aucu
Aucu was discovered in 2014 and since then White Cliff have identified a deposit with high grade gold outcropping at surface and recoveries of 99% from 182 samples.
Aucu is situated in a mountainous area and is split into four major mineralised zones, designated by height, camp gold zone (lowest), south gold zone, lower gold zone and upper gold zone (highest).
The 2016 exploration program is focussed on drilling out an 800 metre long section of the eastern upper gold zone to a maximum vertical depth of 200 metres.
The entire 2016 drilling campaign is set to run from May through to December and will consist of 4000 metres of reverse circulation drilling and 4000 metres of diamond drilling.
Drilling will initially be conducted in 100 metre spaced sections followed by 50 metre infill sections designed to generate an indicated and inferred JORC compliant gold resource.
The exploration target 2 for the upper gold zone in 2016 is 1-2 million tonnes at 15-30 g/t for 500,000 to 1.2 million ounces of gold.
This exploration target is based on the average grade of previous drill intersections completed in the upper gold zone in 2015.
Roads will be cut to expose the mineralised structures across the upper gold zone eastern extension where the average grade of mineralisation intersected in the 2015 drill program was 45 g/t gold.
Kyrgyz Republic
Kyrgyz Republic is a democratic republic bordering Kazakhstan and China.
The country has a government supportive of mining with three new large scale mines opened in 2014 and 2015.
It also has a favourable tax regime with a revenue based royalty of 3%, sales tax of 2% and region tax of 2%.
Analysis
Aucu has four mineralised systems with gold outcropping allowing for low cost test work and advantageous economic feasibility.
White Cliff is well positioned to explore for high grade gold intercepts at a deposit that is likely to scale to one million ounces in 2016/17.
There is a solid opportunity to build a multi-million ounce deposit from the existing JORC resource with the deposit open both at depth and along its 3 kilometre strike.
Previous preliminary metallurgy has suggested 99% overall recoveries and the deposit is hosted in sandstone which will make for low energy and capital milling.
Aucu has a clearly defined exploration schedule through to Q2, 2017 which will produce strong news flow and drill results in an undemanding current market valuation for White Cliff of just $7.5 million.
White Cliff is one of our top picks for 2016/17.
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