Zimbabwe central banker stockpiles gold to bolster ZiG currency
The ZiG - short for Zimbabwe gold — is the nation’s sixth attempt at having a functioning local currency in the last 15 years.
Fury Gold Mines (TSX, NYSE: FURY) announced Monday that the company and affiliates of Newmont (NYSE: NEM, TSE: NGT) have entered into an agreement for Fury to purchase Newmont’s 49.978% interest in the Éléonore South project in Quebec for C$3 million ($2.2m).
As part of the consolidation for Éléonore South, Fury will also spend C$1.3 million ($960,000) to buy the approximately 30.4 million shares of Sirios Resources held by Newmont for investment purposes.
The Éléonore South project is in an area of prolific gold mineralization, with Newmont’s Éléonore mine located to the north and Sirios’ Cheechoo deposit to the east.
Newmont said last week it plans to sell six non-core assets, including Éléonore in Quebec, the Musselwhite and Porcupine mines in Ontario, the Coffee project in the Yukon Territory, and its 70% stake in the Havieron joint venture with Greatland Gold in Western Australia, with proceeds from the transactions used to cut debt.
“Our team has historically ranked the ESJV as one of our more prolific targets for discovery,” Fury Gold Mines CEO Tim Clark said in a news release. “We are excited to now have 100% ownership as we expect this to provide a clearer pathway for more exploration and potential upside in returns for our investors from this project consolidation and investment in Sirios.”
Prospecting to date has identified two distinct styles of mineralization within the project: structurally controlled quartz veins hosted within sedimentary rocks similar to the high-grade mineralization observed at the Éléonore mine; and intrusion-related disseminated gold mineralization similar to that seen at the low-grade bulk tonnage Cheechoo deposit, Fury said.
Numerous gold in-till anomalies remain undrilled throughout the project and will be a focus, it added. The bulk of the untested gold anomalies are similar in characteristics to the Cheechoo style of mineralization.
The JT and Moni prospects at Cheechoo represent a potential higher-grade style of intrusion related gold mineralization with historical drilling intercepting 53.3 metres of 4.22 g/t gold; 6.0 metres of 49.50 g/t gold and 23.8 metres of 3.08 g/t gold. Several of the noted drill intercepts have not been followed up on and remain open, the company said.
Fury Gold Mines is also advancing its Eau Claire project in Quebec, where recent drilling returned 3.5 metres of 31.7 g/t gold at the Hinge target.
