Vancouver — Partial results from Mindoro Resources’ (MIO-V, MNODF-O) infill drilling at its Kay Tanda project in the Philippines sparked investor interest after the cutting of a near-surface, high-grade gold interval.
Hole 20 returned 25 metres (from just 3 metres down-hole depth) averaging 11.5 grams gold per tonne and included a 1-metre interval of 246.4 grams gold. The company considers the intercept to represent true width and is awaiting assays from the remainder of the hole, drilled to 118 metres depth.
Mindoro’s infill program is aimed at tightening up drill spacings (to 12.5 by 12.5 metres) on a portion of the Kay Tanda zone. Most of the previous drilling has been on 50-metre centres.
The company is also hoping to better understand local mineralization continuity.
“We’ve got these higher-grade pods and feeder zones which may not have a great deal of lateral extent but there are probably many within the area of mineralization,” says Mindoro president and CEO Tony Climie. “This is all in the proposed open pit, so this stuff won’t be looked at separately for an underground operation — but what it’ll do is add to the overall tenor of an open-pit resource.”
The company foresees a potential open-pit, heap-leach operation at Kay Tanda targeting the near-surface stockwork zone. It reports good results from first-round metallurgical testing and anticipates an initial resource estimate by mid-summer.
Kay Tanda is in the company’s Archangel project area, situated within Batangas province, in southern Luzon. Gold and silver plus base metal mineralization at Kay Tanda occurs in an epithermal system with zones of quartz stockworks, veins and hydrothermal breccias. Extensive drilling has indicated a near-surface, flat-lying zone of low-grade stockwork mineralization.
Mindoro also reports deeper holes have intersected at least five steeply dipping, higher-grade zones hosting “bonanza-grade” gold and silver that it interprets as feeder zones.
The company has a 51% interest in the Batangas land package, which includes Kay Tanda, and can increase that to 75% by taking any one project to the feasibility stage.
The company holds porphyry copper-gold and epithermal precious metal projects throughout the Philippines.
Mindoro is also advancing its Agata nickel-laterite project in Surigao province, in northern Mindanao. Recent drilling has returned a pair of sections averaging 1.15% nickel and 44.8% iron over an average thickness of 6.6 metres in limonite horizons. The company reports these grades exceed current requirements for direct-shipping-grade ferro-nickel feedstock for nickel-containing pig iron production in the Asia Pacific region.
Five drill rigs are working on Agata with the goal of delivering a resource estimate sufficient for three to five years of planned production at about 600,000 tonnes of direct-shipping material annually. The company has targeted production for the first half of 2008 to feed ferro-nickel markets in China, India and Korea.
Shares of Mindoro have notched up about 20% on the Kay Tanda and Agata results, gaining 20 to trade at around $1.10.
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