K92 Mining (KNT.V) has started to drill the first diamond drill hole (and probably already finished that hole) at the Kora deposit. The company’s drill program is designed to drill-test the mineralization along strike and down dip, as the current resource of 4.4 million tonnes remains open in all directions. This first hole which will have a total depth of 280 meters will be targeting one specific area, approximately 700 meters along strike to the north of Kora.
Expanding Kora has been one of K92’s core objectives and it very likely also is one of the reasons why the Cartesian royalty and gold stream remained limited to the Irumafimpa zone. As you might recall from our May 2016 report, Cartesian only owns a 0.25% NSR on Kora, and the entire gold production remains unencumbered.
Kora is where the real money will be made, and Irumafimpa is just a ‘warm up exercise’ which helps K92 to train its mining crew and to familiarize itself with all procedures. K92 has provided a production update on its Irumafimpa zone, and as a total of 23,400 tonnes of rock have been mined, K92 is quite happy considering the mine plan expected to excavate just 13,645 tonnes of rock. The additional tonnage is a great result and whilst the total amount of recovered ounces is also more than 15% higher than expected, the average grade is quite a bit lower. The AMDAD plan was expecting to mine rock at an average grade of 6.69 g/t gold, but K92’s average was just 4.52 g/t.
This doesn’t have to be alarming, and K92 Mining is doing the right thing by continuing its grade control drilling program to lock in the higher grade zones. According to the company, the zone which will be mined in the next 6-9 months has now demonstrated a continuous mineralization which obviously increased K92’s confidence in the ore block. In the first quarter alone, 3,200 meters of grade control drilling has been completed in no less than 35 holes, so K92 is taking this very seriously.
As the company has made a lot of progress in the past few months, we will release a more detailed update shortly!
Go to K92’s website
The author has a long position in K92 Mining. K92 Mining is a sponsor of the website. Please read the disclaimer
