logo-loader

Mawson Gold seeing encouraging exploration results in Australia, while Finland underpins growth strategy

Published: 10:05 18 Jun 2021 EDT

Snapshot

The group has acquired three shallow high-grade gold assets hosting numerous historic mines in the famous Victoria goldfields of Australia

Gold nuggets
  • A high-quality gold exploration portfolio in two safe Tier 1 mining-friendly jurisdictions
  • Five drill rigs turning during Q1, 2021
  • Sunday Creek drilling seeing width and grade, consistently hitting across multiple veins

What Mawson Gold does:

Mawson Gold Ltd (TSE:MAW), formerly Mawson Resources, is advancing its Rajapalot project in Finnish Lapland, just south of the arctic circle, where both high-grade gold and cobalt have been discovered over a camp-scale area of more than 10 square kilometres (sq km). The company also holds gold assets in Australia.

Finland refines half the world’s cobalt outside of China and the planet's largest cobalt refinery lies just 400 km to the south of Mawson's project.

The unconstrained maiden resource places Rajapalot as one of Finland’s top three gold projects by grade and contained ounces. It is also one of only a few NI 43 101- compliant cobalt resources in Europe.

In late 2018, the company reported 4.3 million tonnes of inferred resource at Rajapalot at 2.3 grams per ton (g/t) gold and 430 parts per million (ppm) cobalt. But, significantly, in 2020, that maiden resource was doubled by Mawson.

The updated open pit and underground constrained inferred resource was pegged at 9 million tonnes at a similar grade of 2.1 g/t gold and 570 ppm cobalt, covering the Raja, Palokas, South Palokas and Rumajärvi prospects, which each lie around 3 km apart within the same geological trend. The firm said 72% of the resource falls within the open-pit outline.

The explorer has also now diversified into Australia, acquiring three shallow high-grade gold assets - Clonbinane, Redcastle and Doctor's Gully - hosting numerous historic mines in the famous Victoria goldfields. Victoria is one of the world's largest orogenic gold provinces, with more than 80 million ounces of gold mined since the 1850s.

It has also become a cornerstone investor in major landholder Nagambie Resources Ltd (ASX:NAG), which holds ground on the Waranga tenements in the same region, including the Nagambie gold mine, which also gives Mawson a pipeline of potentially exciting new projects.

In August 2020, the company announced a name change to Mawson Gold Ltd (from Mawson Resources) as it narrowed its focus onto precious metals following the acquisition of the portfolio of gold projects in Victoria, Australia.

Elsewhere, at its Mt Isa project in Australia, Mawson has staked five exploration prospecting licences (EPMs) for 483 sq km, and in the USA, Mawson has exploration and option agreements on the new Western USA project (WUSA project) - one of the largest areas prospective for epithermal gold in the lower mainland USA (150,500 hectares). There are three gold prospects defined to date.

How is it doing:

Drilling progress, both in Finland and Australia, has been the order of the day for Mawson Gold in 2021.

Looking at Rajapalot, on June 7, Mawson hailed the results of 'comprehensive' geometallurgical testing at the gold-cobalt project in Finland, which showed flotation could be the best method to recover gold and cobalt.

The work was carried out by BATCircle, which is funded by Business Finland, in cooperation with several consortium members, including the company, the Geological Survey of Finland (GTK), and also Aalto University. Mawson said more testing would be carried out to further optimize gold and cobalt recoveries and define a definitive flowsheet.

Earlier, on April 13, Mawson had posted more drill results from Rajapalot which included a new discovery at The Hut prospect showing the thickest mineralized zone drilled so far at the property. One hole hit a length of 70.3m at a grade of 0.9 g/t gold, 828 parts per million (ppm) cobalt and 1.6 g/t gold-equivalent starting from a depth of 95.8m.

The drilling also showed an extension to the high-grade mineralization at the Joki East prospect - a blind discovery made by the company in late 2020. Notably, the Hut and Joki East prospects lie 500m and 1,500m respectively from the closest resource areas.

2021 has also seen Mawson move the Rajapalot asset on from the so-called exploration stage, as it started the ball rolling on two key planning processes, namely the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and land use planning processes.

In Finland, the potential impacts of a project are assessed at the report stage of the EIA process which follows an EIA preparation stage. The provincial land use plan is a long-term plan and guideline for municipalities when drawing up and amending local master plans and local detailed plans.

In Australia, in January, the group reported more encouraging drill results from its Sunday Creek project in Victoria, which showed the potential for a widespread, gold-rich system.

The intercepts, which included 4.2 mtres (m) at 3.2 g/t gold from 88m, were found adjacent to and beneath the historic Apollo mine where "the old miners" left significant gold that was considered too low grade during the late 1800s and early 1900s, leaving immediate follow-up drill targets, the company said.

In February, it released encouraging assays from another five drill holes from Sunday Creek, this time from the historic Gladys mine area.

Mawson said then it had now drilled strong gold results from three vein structures at Sunday Creek - Apollo, Central and now Gladys - and all areas remain open towards depth.

And on March 23, Mawson unveiled assays from the best and deepest hole to date from Sunday Creek. Diamond drill hole MDDSC0012 was sunk 110m vertically below the historic Apollo mine workings and intersected thick and high-grade mineralized intervals over a combined width of 36.4m at 2.4 g/t gold and 0.4% antimony from 17m.

Inflection points:

  • More exploration results from Australia
  • Finland project progress
  • Precious metals moves

What the boss says:

In June's update on Rajapalot, Mawson CEO, Mike Hudson told investors:  "The most comprehensive metallurgical studies performed at Rajapalot to date demonstrate excellent gold recoveries with a viable flowsheet which could include crushing and grinding, gravity recovery, and cyanide leaching with gold recovery via a carbon-in-pulp circuit for production of onsite gold doré."

He added: "Rajapalot is already the 7th largest European cobalt resource, and the BATCircle test work has shown potential to obtain industrial acceptable recoveries to produce cobalt concentrates that could be further treated by hydrometallurgical methods (leaching, solvent extraction, purification) to produce cobalt sulphate."

Contact the author at jon.hopkins@proactiveinvestors.com

Mawson Gold reports high grade gold in trenches at Sunday Creek in Victoria

Mawson Gold Limited (TSX:MAW, OTC:MWSNF)'s Mike Hudson discusses with Proactive's Andrew Scott high grade gold assay results from two trenches located 200 metres east of the current drilled area at its 100%-owned Sunday Creek project in the Victorian Goldfields of Australia. He says...

on 10/10/21