LONDON (Alliance News) - Nyota Minerals Ltd Monday said SRK Exploration has completed its Competent Person's Report on the company's Northern Block in Ethiopia and there have been no material changes to its previously reported data for the site.
The gold exploration company in East Africa said that in February SRK Exploration examined its Boka West, Tsoli Moli and Bendokoro work areas, the focus of the company's planned 2014 field season, and inspected its Boka-Sirba and Arangama targets as part of a wider exploration review.
The company said that a review of the regional geology on site suggests that the licences are prospective for a number of gold and base metal deposit types while there are known gold alluvials on the licences.
Previous trenching at Bendokoro returned prospective intersections including a six metre space at 1.99 grams per tonne of gold and trenching at Boka-West included a 2.9 metre space at 5.94 grams per tonne of gold.
"There is good potential for the discovery of economic mineralisation in the Brantham and Towchester exploration licence areas. Significant gold anomalies have been identified across the licences and locally significant alluvial deposits are being worked by artisanal miners," SRK said in its report.
Nyota said its 2014 work programme on site entails a budgeted USD1.3 million exploration plan split roughly equally across the licence areas but that all the data included in the SRK report has been previously announced by way of a series of market announcements since September 2010.
The company is currently ongoing a total restructuring of operations after selling 75% of its flagship Tulu Kapi project to KEFI Minerals PLC in December after the sharp fall in the gold price last year had left it struggling to find a joint venture partner for the site.
Earlier in March, the company saw its shares fall sharply after its shareholders voted against its remuneration plan and against its request to approve an additional 10% share placing facility.
The gold explorer had said that shareholders had passed a resolution to approve the issue of new shares of up to 10% of the issued share capital of the company, but later issued a correction saying the resolution hadn't in fact been passed on a show of hands.
The company had wanted the extra share placing facility in case it needed extra funds to advance its Ethiopian exploration assets, acquire new resource assets or investments, or for general working capital.
Nyota said at the time it will need to raise funds in the first-half of 2014 in order to pay for ongoing costs at Tulu Kapi and to continue its exploration programme. It said it may decide not to fund its pro-rata share of Tulu Kapi, but will suffer dilution of its shareholding as a result.
The company said earlier in the month that steps have already been taken in the current year to address remuneration concerns, including reducing the board to three persons and agreeing in January to a material reduction in salary for the CEO and fees for other directors.
Nyota Minerals shares were down 2.9% to 0.340 pence Monday.
By Tom McIvor; tommcivor@alliancenews.com; @TomMcIvor1
Copyright © 2014 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
