Modern Mining May 2019

GOLD

a fence spacing of mainly 160 m over a com- bined strike length of 8 km. The results of this drilling, together with the results of historical drilling and other data, subsequently formed the basis for a JORC-compliant Exploration Target, prepared on behalf of Cora by SRK Consulting (UK), based in Cardiff. This was released in October last year. SRK’s report confirmed Cora’s internal expectations for the project. It determined an Exploration Target of between 30 and 50 Mt of gold ore at a grade of between 1,0 and 1,3 g/t to a depth of 100 m. Comments Forster: “The SRK report confirms that Sanankoro could host between 1 and 2 million ounces of gold. One has to bear in mind that this Exploration Target is to a depth of only 100 m in an environ- ment where the depth of oxidation ranges from around 50 m to over 100 m. So clearly there is the potential to develop one or more oxide ‘starter’ pits, which would have low mining and processing costs, before we even start to look more closely at the underlying sulphides, which still remain untested.” Since publication of the Exploration Target, Cora’s work programme has continued at an impressive pace. In late February this year, it announced initial results from its second drill campaign at Sanankoro, which confirmed the continuation of broad zones of shallow, higher grade mineralisation across the Zone A pros- pect on the Sanankoro structure. All holes ended in oxidised material to vertical depths of about 90 m. Intercepts included 8 m at 3,17 g/t Au from 69 m; 26 m at 2,60 g/t from 71 m; and 24 m at 2,83 g/t from 56 m. Cora followed up in March with results from the Selin prospect, several kilometres to the north of Zone A on the Selin structure. These included 4,48 g/t over 46 m from 49 m depth (with the hole ending in mineralisation) and 5,10 g/t over 17 m from 37 m depth. At the

November 2017, within weeks of the listing. Sanankoro is located 110 km south-west of Bamako, Mali’s capital, in the Yanfolila gold belt but will have to be a standalone project as it is located beyond economic trucking range of Hummingbird’s Yanfolila gold mine, which is located about 100 km to the south. Comments Forster: “We’re not the first to explore at Sanankoro and in fact we are build- ing on extensive work carried out by our predecessors on site, Randgold and especially Gold Fields, who between them – starting in the early 2000s – carried out a range of activities including soil sampling, ground geo- physical surveying, trenching and drilling. In all, we estimate that at least US$10 million was invested in exploration at Sanankoro prior to our involvement. We’ve inherited the very large Gold Fields database on the project, which has allowed us to make a flying start.” This historical work, together with Cora’s own exploration, has resulted in the identifica- tion of a large mineralised corridor composed of three subparallel mineralised structures known as Sanankoro, Bokoro and Selin. The first two can be traced from north to south within the Sanankoro permit area over a distance of 14 km while the Selin zone can be traced from the north for a distance of about 10 km before it merges with the Sanankoro structure. Forster notes that the Sanankoro gold prop- erty, which consists of four contiguous permits encompassing an area of 320 km 2 , lies adja- cent to African Gold Group’s Kobada project. This has a mineral resource of 2,2 Moz in all categories and occurs on a NE-SW orientated structure that runs parallel to the Sanankoro mineralisation. Cora’s first field season at Sanankoro was dedicated to assessing the potential scale of the project and included 12 500 m of shallow aircore and RC reconnaissance drilling with

Above: Jon Forster reviews the geology of Sanankoro with Cora Non-Executive Director Dave Pelham and Siaka Koumare.

Right: Sample logging at Sanankoro drill site.

24  MODERN MINING  May 2019