Condor Gold {AIM:CNR} CEO Mark Child delighted shareholders by announcing the discovery of a new area of gold mineralisation at Real De La Cruz, la India, in mining friendly Nicaragua last week.
This discovery, if confirmed by drilling, would enable this deposit to become a low grade satellite feeder for the main mine operation at La India.
Condor Gold CEO Mark Child announces the discovery of a large new area of gold mineralisation at Real De La Cruz, La India, Nicaragua.
Condor Gold CEO Mark Child enthused “It is highly encouraging that Condor’s geologists have defined a large area of gold mineralisation through limited trenching on the Real de La Cruz Concession on La India Project, after the recent trenching program. Condor’s geologists interpret the geological signatures as representing the top of a much larger gold mineralised system”.
Condor have just completed a trenching program at Real de La Cruz within their La India Gold Project, and confirm they have extended the wide zones of low-grade gold mineralisation identified by historical exploration, which has now been traced over a strike length of 1,100 metres.
The result is that Condor have discovered a 200 metre by 40 to 65 metre zone, averaging 1 gram per tonne gold. The core zone is surrounded by an inner zone grading 0.5 grams per tonne which is in turn surrounded by a halo of 0.2 gram per tonne gold mineralization.
Highlights of the Exploration Trenching;
- 13 trenches for 2,646m at Real de La Cruz demonstrate a wide zone of low-grade stockwork gold mineralisation along an 1100m strike length including:
- A core zone of 200m strike length by 40m to 65m width averaging circa 1gpt gold
- An inner zone of 500m strike length by 20 to 60m width averaging over 0.5gpt gold
- An outer halo of at least 1100m strike length by up to 100m width at over 0.2g/t gold In addition.
- Artisanal miners recently excavated a small open pit to access a high-grade breccia that returned an intercept of 4m true width quartz breccia at 16.4g/t gold.
- Gold mineralisation open in all directions and at depth.
- Potential supplementary low-grade feeder pit located only 8km from plant planned for La India Open Pit Resource.
- Large gold footprint with high level vein textures suggests the top of the system.
Gold mineralisation remains open in all directions where steep slopes or alluvial cover over 2m deep made trench sampling impractical. Isolated gold mineralised outcrops outside of the trench-tested area suggest that there is more near surface gold mineralisation to be discovered.
The 200m spacing employed will require infill trenching to confidently define the variations in grade and width prior to drill testing.
CEO Mark Child concluded “These trench results endorse Condor’s strategy of continuing to explore the considerable upside potential of La India Gold District while fast tracking the main La India Open Pit Resource of 921,000 ounces at 3 grams per tonne gold to production.”
Company detail
Condor Gold are working on the 280 square kilometre La India Project which is located in the historic La India Gold Mining District of Nicaragua where 576,000 ounces gold have been historically produced at an average grade of 13.4 grams per tonne by Noranda Mining.
Today the project area has been consolidated and has a defined NI 43-101 resource of 2.33 million ounces of gold, at an average grade of 3.9 grams per tonne.
A preliminary economic assessment on the project has predicted that the La India Project, as it stands today, could be exploited at a rate of 150,000 ounces per annum for the first 8 years of a 13 year mine life with low cash costs and a payback period of only 3 years.