Promising targets emerge at West African prospect

AN Australian explorer has confirmed “excellent” gold recoveries from an exploration prospect in West Africa, one of two advanced standalone gold resource targets in Burkina Faso.
Comprising a 2.5km-long zone of continuous gold mineralisation, average gold recoveries from the K4/ K5 prospect at the Reo gold project have left Middle Island Resources with arguably the most promising of its suite of maturing targets across the West African landscape.
After procuring 17 individual samples from diamond core holes across the mineralisation zone, representative of all states of oxidisation, rock type and gold grade, the company employed gold cyanisation – a commonly-used metallurgical technique for extracting gold from ore – to establish the gold potential of the prospect.
From this, the company has published its auspicious gold recovery numbers; final solution readings generated average indicative recoveries of 93 per cent, 97 per cent and 95 per cent returned from oxide, transitionary and primary ore types, respectively.
These excellent indicative gold recoveries provide considerable confidence for the K4/K5 prospect’s potential, prior to the company embarking on the next phase of the exploration project; resource definition drilling.
Middle Island managing director Rick Yeates said the most encouraging data regarding the prospect potential has now been affirmatively established, despite the company needing to conduct further test drilling, to fully outline the
prospect’s details.
“It has been a transformational few weeks at Middle Island, firstly with the identification of a significant ‘standalone’ resource target at the flagship K4/K5 prospect, followed by these encouraging preliminary cyanidation test results,” Mr Yeates said.
“While RC pattern drilling will provide the ‘proof in the pudding’, these were two key boxes that required ticking in the company’s progress towards a significant rerating.”