Greatland Gold PLC (LON:GGP) shares were higher on Wednesday as the firm began drilling at the Scallywag prospect located at the Paterson project in Western Australia.
The AIM-listed firm said the drilling campaign will initially focus on high-priority targets within the prospect including Kraken, Blackbeard and London.
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Once the initial phase of drilling is completed, Greatland said it expects to drill additional high-priority targets on its Paterson Range East and Black Hills licences including Goliath, Los Diablos and Parlay.
The company said an airborne electromagnetic survey has also commenced, covering 1,033 line kilometres across the western portion of the Paterson project, which is aiming to identify conductive responses related to massive sulphide mineralisation across western parts of the Havieron and Paterson Range East licences and the whole of the Black Hills licence.
"We are very excited to be moving forward with systematic drill testing of high-priority targets in the Paterson region. These targets were identified by previous geophysical and geochemical surveys across our Paterson licences, and many of these targets display similar geophysical characteristics to our nearby Havieron gold-copper deposit, where ongoing drilling under a Farm-in with Newcrest has returned a series of outstanding results", said Greatland chief executive Gervaise Heddle.
Shares in the firm rose 4.1% to 12.7p in early deals.