JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Recent exploration at the newly added Siuna mineral concessions belonging to TSX-V-listed Calibre Mining’s 253 km² silver-gold project, in north-east Nicaragua, is returning positive results.

The company said last week that exploration activities at the Siuna project, which added some additional 241 km² to the 12 km² La Luz project, highlighted the historic gold trend of the region, with new results expected to prioritise drill targets moving forward.

Work currently under way at the gold-silver project, in which Canadian miner Centerra Gold can earn a 70% interest by investing a total of $9-million in exploration on the property before December 31, 2020, includes geological mapping, geochemical sampling and geophysical surveys designed to further define a number of existing gold anomalies.

“Recent exploration has defined a series of drill targets along the Cerro Coyol-Tiburon gold trend and west of Cerro Aeropuerto. The positive results received for the metallurgical testing on the Cerro Aeropuerto drill core are encouraging. Field crews are busy further defining and prioritising a series of kilometre-scale gold targets previously identified in the northern Siuna area,” said Calibre president and CEO Greg Smith in an update to shareholders.

Results from four bottle-roll tests on average-grade Cerro Aeropuerto mineralisation returned average gold recoveries of 95.6% after 24 hours and 96.4% after 48 hours, while trenching along a 3.8 km stretch across the Cerro Coyol-El Tiburon trend has defined a number of targets to be tested by the upcoming diamond drill programme.

“An estimated 1 600 m to 1 800 m of diamond drilling is planned for the third and fourth quarters of 2016 and will target high-priority anomalies defined along the Cerro Coyol-El Tiburon trend and west of Cerro Aeropuerto,” he said.

Further work, comprising in-fill soil sampling, rock sampling and trenching, will be completed on high-priority targets with the Northern Siuna area.

"Calibre's partnership with Centerra has been very successful in advancing the existing Cerro Aeropuerto project and discovering the Cerro Coyol-Tiburon gold trend,” Smith concluded.