Good Evening TagH, You have probably looked at the historical...

Good Evening TagH,

You have probably looked at the historical data and realized Francopan would have to be pretty spectacular to become an open pit under nearly 200m of cover. Lots of potential there but thick cover makes it a much lower priority at the moment.

For weekend reading - Malagasy acquires Karlawinda Gold Project - Oct 15

Francopan discovered by WMC while looking for Ni! [Nebo-Babel was a more successful Ni Target of the same? campaign I believe. Apparently the Tropicana Au anomaly was also an outcome! that was not followed up by WMC].

The pure serendipity of KBD1 hitting 37m at 1.9g/t Au [including 8m at 5.1 g/t (with 1m @21g/t) seems to indicate the possibility of a fairly large system. Subsequent holes showed it was no fluke but too deep for that stage of a project.


The image here is from the interactive 3D presentation on CMM's home page


Independence acquired the project from WMC/BHP looked at Francopan and then followed up soil geochem that lead to the discovery of Bibra. Hundreds of holes later the Bibra deposit shows very good continuity down dip and along strike without the full extent being delineated yet.

CMM probably hope the same degree of continuity and stacked lenses will be proven further at Francopan. Hopefully some of the deeper lenses continue up dip to where the cover is shallower and may be accessible from an open pit. The grades intersected so far appear to be higher than at Bibra which could augur well for UG in the distant future.

Malagasy/CMM have yet to follow up on the exploration to see what the relationship of Bibra is to Francopan. Apparently Bibra is in Metasandstones while Francopan is a mix of Meta volcanics and sandstones. If gold is in the shears then host rock chemistry may play a role in grade. It will be intersting to see if the two deposits are part of the same system.

Tropicana is still expanding (albeit more slowly) 12 years after the initial discovery and now stretches over some 5 Kms of faulted and folded strike length. The main lode has been intersected at 1 Km depth (2010 - with 2.1m @1.9g/t Au within 10m of weakly mineralized zone). There are stacked lenses at Tropo but don't appear to be as extensive as Karlawinda [not too certain about this though].




The drilling to date at Bibra/?Francopan IMO suggests such depth extent may be possible at Karlawinda. But as at Tropo/Havana/etc grade, size and continuity will have to be there for any UG development to take place. Long way down the track.