LONDON listed metals exploration company Kavango Resources PLC latest drill and Induced Polarisation (IP) survey results have motivated the group to align operations towards the development of Western-Australia open pit gold mines in Zimbabwe.
The miner began an exploration and drilling programme across its three existing projects late last year, starting with its Hillside project and results so far have exceeded the company’s expectations, providing strong evidence of the project’s open pit mining potential.
Just last month, Kavango revealed that assays from drilling at Hillside Prospects 2 and 4 had returned wide areas of significant gold at shallow depths.
Highlight intersections from Prospect 2 include 7.2 m @ 9.95 g/t gold from 50.64 m including 1.61 m @ 31.57 g/t gold while intersections from Prospect 4 include 2.53 m @ 29.08 g/t gold from 97.47 m.
Meanwhile, IP surveying at both projects has shown what Kavango has interpreted to represent a series of shears.In each case, these shears are hosted within a broad area known as a “shear zone”-Gold mineralisation can often be associated with shear zones.
Kavango’s chief executive officer, Ben Turney is positive on the objective of developing Western Australia-style open pit gold mines in Zimbabwe.
“Open pit mining has become the dominant style of mining in Western Australia, and has been the primary driver behind Australia’s emergence as the world’s leading gold producer in recent decades.
“Zimbabwe’s geology mirrors that of Western Australia and the country has a rich history of high-grade gold mining across its greenstone belts. However, Zimbabwe’s potential to host a multitude of large-scale, bulk minable gold deposits remains largely undeveloped. This presents the nation with an immense economic opportunity,” he said.
Turney said Kavango has identified a strong pipeline of claim packages covering historic high-grade gold mines amid plans to apply modern exploration and drilling techniques across three of these to assess their open pit potential and develop bulk mining operations.
“In doing so, our objective is to contribute to the 2030 Vision of turning Zimbabwe into an upper middle-income economy,” he added.
The company intends to take advantage of huge potential in the country where annual production as a whole totals more than 10 million ounces today, from less than 1 million ounces at the beginning of the 1980s.
Zimbabwe has a long history of high-grade gold mining across some 4,000 deposits, with production exceeding that of Australia in the early 1980s.
Source NewZimbabwe
