Aim-listed IronRidge Resources has started drilling at the Zaranou gold project, in Côte d'Ivoire.

Drilling at the licence, which borders with Ghana and is along strike from significant gold mines, is targeted to be completed early in the new year, with results expected during the first quarter of 2020.

While drilling is ongoing, the company says it will continue with regional soil sampling in the north-east and south-west portions of the licence, outside of areas of intensive artisanal and alluvial mining.

The drone survey, meanwhile, continues to generate high-resolution imagery and topographic control to assist in exploration drilling programmes and baseline studies.

IronRidge COO Len Kolff has commended the team on completing the drill planning, community consultation and drill access construction in time for the arrival of the Geodrill rigs, while continuing the mapping, soil sampling and drone survey activities.

"We are excited to get the drill programme under way to test below the extensive hard-rock artisanal mining zones with high-grade channel sampling results, as well as discrete magnetic anomalies spatially associated with the mineralised structures targeted by the artisanals,” Kolff comments, dubbing it “a challenging task”.

He explains that the area is vast, with over 40 km strike of alluvial workings within which the artisanals have discovered and defined 16 km strike of in-situ mineralised structures, of which IronRidge is testing about 8 km strike within the most intensively pitted zone.

"We believe the wide spaced [air-core] drill traverses across the width of the mineralised corridor, in conjunction with targeted deeper [reverse circulation] holes, will provide us with the best chance of testing the structures across strike and at depth at this early stage of exploration across a large area,” Kolff notes.