Gold Fields may sell smaller mines after Osisko acquisition
The Johannesburg-based gold miner is shifting focus to advancing its new Salares Norte mine in Chile.
New Found Gold (TSXV: NFG; NYSEA: NFGC) reports new drill results at the Monte Carlo zone that continue to boost Queensway as Newfoundland’s highest-grade gold project.
Drill hole NFGC-23-1690 cut 2 metres grading 91.9 grams gold per tonne from 166.8 metres depth while hole NFGC-23-1683 returned 2.7 metres at 18.9 grams from 51.6 metres, New Found Gold said in a release on Wednesday. Hole NFGC-22-1045 cut 2.8 metres grading 14.9 grams from 32.4 metres downhole.
Monte Carlo, first reported in May, is on the west side of the Appleton fault along with Keats West and K2. The fault runs southwest to northeast across the 1,662-sq.-km Queensway project, located 15 km west of Gander. The east side holds the Keats, Keats North, Iceberg, Iceberg East, Golden Joint, Lotto, Jackpot and Everest discoveries.
“This high-grade domain shares several characteristics with Lotto and Golden Joint in terms of mineralization strength, as well as style and continuity,” Melissa Render, vice president of exploration, said in the release. “This western corridor has proven to be equally as prospective as the east side.”
Shares in New Found Gold rose 2.4% on Wednesday morning in Toronto to C$5.59 apiece, valuing the company at C$1 billion. They’ve traded in a 52-week window of C$4.41 to C$7.60.
New Found is part of a central Newfoundland gold exploration surge including the abutting Labrador Gold (TSXV: LAB) and Exploits Discovery (TSXV: NFLD) with their own high-grade assays. Marathon Gold’s (TSX: MOZ) nearly $500–million Valentine open-pit mine and mill under construction about 200 km west of Gander is the region’s most advanced project.
The project has consistently shown strong drill results, topping The Northern Miner’s weekly Drill Down rankings several times since it burst onto the scene in 2019 with a hole at the Keats target returning 19 metres grading 92.9 grams from 96 metres downhole.
Monte Carlo, located near Lotto, is hosted in an east-west striking, steeply dipping fault zone that has been intercepted over a strike length of 520 metres and down to a vertical depth of 160 metres, the company says. The new drill results expand a high-grade segment of Monte Carlo that starts at surface, has a strike length of 135 metres and remains open to depth. Exploration drilling will aim to develop this zone down-dip, Render said.
It’s part of a 500,000-metre drill program at Queensway with about 33,000 metres of core pending assay results, New Found said. The company is funded with C$29.5 million in cash and liquid securities on hand, it said.
In August, New Found reported hole NFGC-22-952 at K2 cut 2 metres grading 197.78 grams from 187 metres depth. It was 725 metres north of Lotto and 2.2 km north of the Keats West deposits on the west side of the Appleton fault.
