ECR Minerals PLC (LON:ECR) shares jumped in late-morning Thursday as it hailed “positive progress” for its gold drilling programmes at the Creswick and Blue Moon projects in Victoria, Australia.
The gold miner said in an update that it had completed 1,687 metres of drilling in 17 holes at Creswick and 774m of drilling in six target holes at Blue Moon.
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Drilling would continue at Blue Moon targeting extensions of where gold had been identified, and that a “substantial” number of samples had been submitted for laboratory testing, with assays results expected “in the coming weeks”.
Craig Brown, chief executive of ECR, said the company had “successfully encountered a number of host structures that were anticipated and targeted” in the drill programmes, adding that gold had been panned in some of the samples.
“We await assay data to add to our field observations and will provide further updates to the market when assay information has been received and reviewed by the team”, he added.
Shares were up 5.9% at 0.9p.