Helio high on southern Tanzania

Helio Resource Corp. (HRC-V) continues to show that Tanzania has plenty of gold potential further south than most Western investors would have it.

The company released its latest results from its SMP gold project in the country that show the company is on its way to having three significant deposits outlined in the region.

The latest round of drilling focused on the Tumbili Target at the project where the company says it has now confirmed mineralization over 1.4 km strike length by drilling off five fences of north-south RC drill holes. The drilling showed mineralization thickens towards the west and is still open to the east and west along strike and to depth.

Highlight intercepts included 12 metres at 0.8 grams gold, 24 metres at 0.7 grams gold and 4 metres at 1.7 grams gold. All of those intercepts occurred between depths of 26 and 88 metres.

Also bullish was the discovery of a new, northwest trending, high grade zone that returned 2 metres grading 17.8 grams gold per tonne.

The new zone is associated with a 600 metre long gold-in-soil anomaly and is not included in the existing resource at SMP.

Previous drilling at Tumbili returned highlight intercepts of 16 metres grading 1.9 grams gold and 12 metres grading 1.4 grams gold.

In all Helio drilled 36 holes for 3,210 metres as part of its 2011 drill program at the target. The holes were drilled on five drill fence lines 200 to 400 metres apart.

Helio says the next step will be to drill another 3,000 metres of infill drilling so that it can convert the mineralization into a compliant resource estimate.

Gold mineralization at the zone is associated with sheeted quartz veins, and disseminated pyrite within a sericite-altered granitic host rock. The nature of the mineralization is consistent with mineralization observed at two of the company’s other key targets: Kenge and Porcupine. Metallurgical test-work at those zones shows gold recoveries of up to 96%, through conventional processing techniques.

SMP stretches out over 238 sq km in southern Tanzania. While the company has hit gold at 30 different targets, it is the Porcupine and Kenge targets that are the most defined as both have compliant resources.

In November of 2010 the company released a maiden resource estimate for SMP that outlined Measured and Indicated resources of 10.94 million tonnes grading 1.41 grams for 498,075 oz. and inferred resources of 7.06 million tonnes grading 1.2 grams gold for 273,847 oz.

In Toronto on Jan. 10 the company’s shares were up 11% or 4¢ to 34¢ on 42,000 shares traded.