The past year has been an “exciting period” for Greatland Gold PLC (LON:GGP), the AIM-listed precious and base metals explorer.
Greatland has four projects in Western Australia – Paterson, Ernest Giles, Panorama and Bromus – as well as Firetower and Warrentinna in Tasmania.
WATCH: Greatland’s second drill programme at Havieron 'off to exciting start'
It has been busy at all of its assets and raised £4.44mln (2017: £1.37mln) during the year to help fund the work.
Perhaps the most significant progress over the past year has been made at Paterson, particularly the Havieron and Black Hills licences within that project.
Back in the spring, Greatland carried out its first drilling campaign at Havieron which returned “excellent results”, including a 121 metre-long intersect averaging 2.93 grams per tonne of gold and 0.23% copper.
A second programme kicked off last month and in the very first hole there was visible gold mineralisation, adding to the firm’s belief that Havieron has the potential to be a “very large mineralised system”.
Black Hills, gold nuggets
Over at the nearby Black Hills licence which was acquired this time last year, Greatland found “multiple” gold nuggets at the surface during its first exploration programme over summer.
Additional rock chip samples were collected and returned grades of up to 81.7 g/t gold, helping to boost the strike to 800 metres.
Greatland was dealt a minor setback at its Ernest Giles project when mining giant Newmont, which has the first refusal on the project, opted not to take things any further.
Since then, the company has been busy with more exploration and drilling programmes which extended two previously identified large gold zones in the Meadows area and detected gold, silver and copper mineralization at the Wishbone area.
WATCH: World Gold Council reviews Q3 gold trends
On a broader note, Greatland has told investors it remains “confident” in the long-term fundamentals of the mining industry, while it is also “optimistic” regarding the prices of gold, copper and other metals.
For the 12 months ended June 30 2018, the explorer posted a loss of £1.84mln (2017: £1.37mln).
Greatland shares were down 3% to 1.12p on Thursday afternoon.
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