Drilling results from Aim-listed West Africa-focused gold company Cora Gold’s Sanankoro project highlight the high-grade potential within the near-surface resources of the southern deposits of the southern Mali prospect.

The company remains on schedule to drill up to 35 000 m by end of the programme, with a dual focus on targeting resource growth and infill drilling to convert existing inferred resources to indicated.

Drill results from Zone A of the prospect found 19 m of gold at a grade of 31.56 g/t from 65 m. This intercept, Cora reports, highlights the potential short-range, generative grade potential of these traditionally sparsely drilled structures.

CEO Bert Monro says this intersect is “by far” the most significant drill hole that Cora has ever drilled. “This hole sits outside the existing inferred resource pit shell, starting 50 m deeper than the current resource pit shell, so offers even greater upside to the Sanankoro gold project.”

Also at Zone A, 21 m of gold was found at a grade of 5.75 g/t from 98 m and 17 m of gold at a grade of 2.44 g/t from 34 m.

In addition, this zone revealed gold for 19 m at a grade of 2.07 g/t from 28 m.

The results, to date, have been “extremely encouraging”, with good widths and high-grade results in generally shallow oxides ore, Cora reports.

Zone A verges westward and exhibits a central, main high-grade gold fault with broader, lower-grade, lower-strain margins on both footwall and hanging-wall contacts, which creates a 40 m to 60 m horizontal width at surface.

Drilling at Zone C – currently a pre-resource discovery and not part of any current mineral resource estimate – found gold for 14 m at a grade of 8.54 g/t from 115 m, 7 m at a grade of 12.17 g/t from 70 m and 24 m at a grade of 2.32 g/t from 86 m.

Further, Zone C also revealed gold for 30 m at a grade of 1.68 g/t from 74 m.

Cora reports that follow-up development drilling has started at Zone A and will alternate with Zone C to enhance targeting.

The current drill programme is continuing to deliver “very high-grade” oxide drill results from shallow depths, offering significant economic potential for the upcoming resource and definitive feasibility study, Monro says.

Zone C Phase 1 results highlight the opportunity to develop a first openpit resource this year from this prospect and, by extension, opens up the regional potential of the Sanankoro West Trend to new resource discovery in 2022.

“Zones A and C were historically lower grade than Selin, but these results demonstrate that there is potential for better grades in these deposits,” says Monro.

He adds that Cora is aiming to complete the drill programme over the next month, with a resource update due to follow once all the assay results have been received.