Exploration firm SolGold (LSE:SOLG) rose 3.6pc to 24.4p today after reporting that it has identified several areas of strong gold mineralisation at its Cisne project in Ecuador. The business said it has discovered outcropping epithermal-style alteration and mineralisation with multiple episodes of quartz veining after following up numerous gold anomalies at the 100pc-owned site.
The discoveries feature similarities to the epithermal gold system at Fruta del Norte in Southern Ecuador, which contains 14m ounces of gold. Rock chip samples at the discoveries returned gold and silver greater than 1g/t gold, with a best rock sample result of 15.3g/t gold and 23/6g/t silver.
The firm is now targeting the discovery of a significant gold deposit at the site, which comprises three concessions (El Cisne 2A, El Cisne 2B and El Cisne 2C) and has a total land area of 14,672 hectares. A program of gridded soil geochemistry is now being planned to help determine the extent of the epithermal system along with possible trenching and rock channel sampling.
Following today’s discovery, SolGold has defined targets indicative of large mineralised porphyry copper or gold systems in 10 regional projects across Ecuador. Solgold is aiming to turn Ecuador into a new copper province across its 73 concessions and ten major mineralisation centres. It hopes to become a tier 1 copper-gold producing company through discovery.
Today’s report follows the news yesterday that SolGold has extended the high-grade resource at its Cascabel project in Northern Ecuador through an extensive drilling programme. It is now carrying out infill and extension drilling to develop the high-grade core of the project’s Alpala Deposit.