making great progress in ghana

Feature Story
Date: January 14, 2005

Adamus Resources Is Making Great Progress In Ghana At Opposite End Of Ashanti Gold Belt To AIM listed African Gold.

Yesterday Minews wrote about AIM llisted African Gold with its projects at the northern end of the Ashanti gold belt: now it is the turn of ASX listed Adamus Resources which is in rather a similar position at the southern end of the belt. No company could ask for a better address as this prolific belt has hosted over 60 million ounces in gold deposits in its time. A total of 37 million ounces exists within a 50kms radius of Adamus’s project which is centred just 40kms along strike from the world class deposits of Bogosu with reserves of 3.3 million ozs and Prestea 10.7 million ozs.

In 2002 the company acquired the Salman project which covers around 500 sq kms of the southern extension of the Ashanti gold belt. It is close to sealed roads, grid power, major port facilities and the major mining centre at Tarkwa. The third hole intersected 75 metres grading 3.1 g/t gold from surface and ending in mineralisation.. This was an interesting snub for BHP which moved off the ground a few years back as a result of one of those strange decisions that major companies make when a 10 million oz deposit does not fall into its lap instantaneously. Since then the company has continued to drill and has come up with its first resource estimate of 10 million tonnes grading 2.2 g/t to give 720,000 ozs of contained gold. Broad, consistent zones of mineralization have been identified over the Salman Trend which extends over at least 8 kms of strike length and the plan is to drill the whole of the Trend

Once the resource estimate was completed Adamus carried out some drilling on the southern zone of the Trend and significant mineralization was encountered everywhere with an intersection of 20 metres at 2.18 g/t gold from 32 metres being an average example. In the meantime the South Ashanti gold project , which originally focused on the Salman deposit, was expanded to include the Anwia deposit which has an indicated resource of 220,000 ounces as well as the Akanko and Tumentu prospects on the northern boundary. Akanko contains a high grade underground mine operated in the past and had never been drilled despite exhibiting extensive gold-in-soil anomalies. Drilling then moved on to the North Hill and Akanko South projects, both of which are along strike from the northern zone of the Trend. Comparatively little drilling has been done as yet, but there was an intersection of 34 metres at 13.7 g/t at North Hill and one of 24 metres at 2.26 g/t from surface at Akanko South.

It is still early days, but there is a good chance that the company may be able to a low strip ratio, low cost, mining operation. This may involve a number of pits a single central milling plant, but there is also the possibility of trucking ore to the Tarkwa mining centre which is not too far away. The interesting thing now is that the Anwia deposit could prove to have even more potential than Salman which is 9 kms to the east. Previous explorers intersected multiple zones of gold mineralization within the top 150 metres and the surface expression of the deposit consists of extensive, shall dipping quartz veining extending for several hundred metres along strike. Every effort is now being made to gain a better understanding of the geology as this will assist in targeting drilling around the deposit as well as further afield.

A number of soil anomalies have been identified around Anwia and the company hit the bullseye at Nfutu which sits between Anwia and Salman. Here reconnaissance drilling confirmed a new discovery with significant widths and grades recorded on two lines 300 metres apart and included an intersection of 20 metres at 8.9 g/t gold. This has led Hamish Halliday, the geologist who is also managing director of the company, to believe that the rest of the soil anomalies have potential to contain significant mineralisation. He will clearly have been further encouraged by the successful diamond drilling on the Anwia deposit itself which has indicated the presence of high grade zones within the broader mineralised system These have exploration potential along strike and down dip and a further programme of drilling is now in progress.

In September the company raised A$6.9 million through a placement with North American and Australian investors. This was quite an achievement as North Americans tend to be wary of Africa and think that every country is next door to Zimbabwe. Australians simply prefer to have their investments on home territory which is fair enough as Australia is a big country. London, on the other hand , is very positive about Africa and Ghana comes somewhere near top of the list. Aussie companies do not need to obtain an expensive AIM listing to be noticed over here as Troy Resources has proved conclusively. Fund managers here also prefer Aussie placings as they do not involve the dreaded lock-ins which are viewed as putting a nil value on new shares until trading starts. Maybe Adamus should make its presence felt up here with a head-to-head with African Gold.