A large soil anomaly with a peak value of 0.25 g/t gold has been discovered at the New York target area of ASX-listed Tanga Resources’ Hanang gold project, in Tanzania, following a geochemical sampling and mapping programme.

Tanga Resources CEO Matthew Bowles explains that the New York target area is a recently identified exploration target displaying extensive alteration, quartz veining, sulphide development and strong structural deformation in Archaean rocks, extending over 16 km2 in the western part of the company’s Hanang gold project.

“These results from Tanga’s recent mapping and soil sampling at New York suggest there are a number of new gold targets. All the results are coincident with skarn altered banded iron formation (BIF), as we have encountered at the Winston mine site, and confirm the exceptional prospectivity of New York and the overall Hanang gold project,” he says.

Bowles explains that the new New York target area is about 15 km to the west of, and along strike from, the high-grade Winston gold discovery in the Hanang project area.

The main anomaly identified from the latest exploration results at New York is over 250 m long and 200 m wide, as defined by a coherent +100 parts per billion (ppb) gold contour, within a much larger 4 km by 3 km anomalous zone. He states that several other anomalous areas of gold have been identified including a 1.5-km-long and 750-m-wide anomaly of +5 ppb gold to the south of the main anomaly.

“These results have confirmed our regional targeting concepts and will assist in our continuing surface exploration work in the lead-up to prioritising targets for a first pass drill programme at New York,” Bowles explains.

Further results from the exploration programme at New York are still pending and will be released at the earliest opportunity. Bowles says the Hanang gold project is a regional-scale gold project of over 1 000 km2 hosting a major mineralised structural corridor on a highly prospective Archaean greenstone belt.

More than 900 samples were collected over the New York target area during June and July. Mapping was completed over areas of New York in July, with several additional areas of prospective host rocks identified where soil sampling has not yet been proposed.

More than 80 rock chip samples were taken from the skarn altered BIF horizons across the project. These have been submitted for analysis, with results for gold analysis by fire assay pending.

Bowles concludes that geological mapping, rock chip sampling and soil sampling at New York is continuing. Within the Hanang gold project, there are numerous high-priority gold targets that remain untested.

Tanga also owns the Geita exploration project, which consists of ten 99.95%-owned prospecting licences, covering 154 km2 in largely Archaean BIF-greenstone terrain in north-west Tanzania, at the southern end of Lake Victoria. Geita is 20 km along strike from the 17-million ounce Bulyanhulu gold project owned by gold producer Acacia Mining. Acacia has been operating in Tanzania for over a decade and during that time has produced over nine-million ounces of gold from “our combination of openpit and underground mines, making us the leading gold producer in Tanzania”.