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REGIONAL ROUNDUP
Golden road back to Botswana
Gold Road Resources Ltd’s success in quisition (subject to
Western Australia’s Yamarna green-
stone belt will be hard to replicate, how- shareholder approval),
ever, Laconia Resources Ltd believes it
has a chance of doing so in Botswana. Laconia will have almost
“Our plan is to do exactly what Gold 900sq km of ground pro-
Road has done and apply those first-
pass, simple, tried and tested and highly spective for gold-nickel-
successful methods to a terrain that
hasn’t had that work done on it at all,†La- copper-PGMs in terrain
conia chief executive Quinton Hills told
Paydirt. bereft of modern day ex-
While Gold Road started from scratch ploration.
at Yarmarna – where it has since courted
Gold Fields Ltd to the 5 moz Gruyere pro- Previous exploration
ject – Laconia’s vision is a little clearer at
Kraaipan. has been focused on
Laconia has over 14,000 soil samples outcropping rocks only,
from a geochemical survey to work with,
while geophysical data has identified leaving untapped poten-
several anomalous areas for immediate
follow-up at Kraaipan. tial under cover.
Furthermore, Kraaipan, southern Bot- Hills said transport-
swana, is directly along strike from Har-
mony Gold Mining Company Ltd’s 4 moz ed overburden meant
Kalgold open pit operation in South Af-
rica and also adjacent to significant PGE there was about 30m of
deposits in that country.
cover to contend with
Upon completion of the Kraaipan ac-
at Kraaipan, with some
sections only covered by
5-10m.
Geochemical soil and
calcrete sampling will
be applied at Kraaipan,
while analysis of infill soil
survey samples and as- Laconia has 50km of greenstones in Botswana, about 45km
sessment of regional soil north of Harmony’s 4 moz Kalgold mine in South Africa
sampling survey results
will be undertaken by a gold expert. the work and make sure the drill targets
An aircore drilling programme sam- are strong enough to drill. We may have
pling the calcrete is also to do some ground EM also to ensure the
planned, along with a targets are strong enough,†Hills said.
geophysics programme. Early exploration success could serve
Results from that work Laconia well considering the amount of
will be used to design a land it has in Botswana.
more revealing drilling “I can see so many companies
programme incorporating scrounging over postage stamp size ten-
new targets and testing ure that has been worked over four or
of mineralisation detected five times, whereas we can go over this
by previous explorers. enormous suite of greenstones and ap-
Rock chip sampling has ply these simple proven methods to find
returned assays grading ore deposits which have never been ap-
up to 36 g/t gold, while plied [to this area],†Hills said.
RAB drilling has inter- “On the back of the success of Gold
sected significant shallow Road, still quite strong gold prices and
gold mineralisation with the market definitely appearing to be
hits such as 13m @ 1.7 g/t waking up, we are confident in this pro-
from 11m, including 3m @ ject. We believe this is a really unique
5.1 g/t. opportunity. You cannot get that size of
Hills said Laconia package of greenstones, highly prospec-
hoped to be in a position tive greenstones, which are proven to
to drill the gold targets by have gold in them from some historical
the end of the year, while exploration, anywhere in the world.â€
testing of the nickel-cop- – Mark Andrews
per-PGM potential could
start earlier.
“Within three to four
months we should be able
to work those [existing]
VTEM targets, the VTEM
is a bit older so we have to
Quinton Hills get a geophysicist in to do
PAGE 78 MAY 2017 AUSTRALIA’S PAYDIRT
