The Mining Journal Interview....17 Jul 2018 17:28
MINING JOURNAL 17/7/18 Greatland approves exploration at Black Hills Greatland Gold (AIM:GGP) has approved a new exploration programme at its 100%-owned Black Hills licence, part of its Paterson project in Western Australia’s Paterson region. The exploration comes after the company discovered multiple gold nuggets at Black Hills, with the programme to start next week after it received drilling approvals from the WA government. Greatland CEO Gervaise Heddle told Mining Journal the company had weighed up various options for advancing exploration at Black Hills, but it had been tempting to "just bite the bullet and just start drilling", particularly with the visible gold at surface. Since the company acquired Black Hills in November last year, it has compiled historic data and established a team on the ground to collect rock chip samples. "We knew it was prospective for gold … so the team went out and in the first few days collected classic gold nuggets. It is free gold that they found at surface, so it was quite an extraordinary result really in this day and age in a place like Australia to go out and find visible gold at surface," he said. "What it means is that clearly there is a design of arguably very high-grade gold there at Saddle Reefs that is outcropping at surface and what we need to do now is to try to determine the extent of that — how long is the strike of that higher grade of gold, how deep will it go and so once we complete this current campaign, we'll then again announce what the next steps will be." The new exploration programme will include a three-dimensional induced polarisation (3DIP) survey covering a strike length of 1,200m over the high-grade gold mineralised zone recently identified at the Saddle Reefs prospect and the areas immediately to the north and south of that zone. Greatland said the 3DIP survey would help outline the orientation and depth of the gold mineralisation identified at surface and was expected to take around two weeks to complete. Besides Black Hills, Heddle said Greatland would also be continuing to focus on the adjacent 100%-owned Havieron project where it has also announced new drilling campaign after encouraging results from the first drill programme. The first drill hole last month highlighted the potential for a large mineralised system. Heddle said the results of 121m at 2.93 g/t gold and 0.23% copper from 497m, including 11.5m at 21.23g/t gold and 0.67% copper represented a "significant discovery of a high grade zone". "Obviously we knew there was copper and gold there, but this really changes the picture for us and I think it's safe to say this will now be the highest priority exploration project for us moving forward," he said. "It's attracting a lot of interest from investors and from people in the industry, so that's been great." The market certainly has appreciated Greatland's recent activities, with the company's share price up 97% in the past month to the current 1.48p (US1.96c). The company