ASX: SKM - Skylark Minerals
Skylark Minerals kicks in the door: newest million-ounce club member arrives!
Skylark Minerals Managing Director Michael Jardine on 3AW, 2GB & 6PR Bulls N' Bears Report
ASX-listed Skylark Minerals Managing Director Michael Jardine talks to Matt Birney on Bulls N’ Bears about Skylark’s massive new gold resource upgrade that still has plenty of legs left in it.
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Skylark Minerals is chasing gold in Côte d’Ivoire, on the same West African greenstone belt that hosts some of the biggest mines on the continent. Its Zaranou project has always had the ingredients — gold in the soils along a massive corridor and old artisanal workings scattered everywhere all — but only a modest resource – that is until now. Skylark has just finished its first proper drill-out, and the arithmetic – and the resource has changed sharply.
RADIO INTERVIEW - TRANSCRIPT
Matt Birney - Welcome to Bulls N' Bears, brought to you today by West African gold explorer Skylark Minerals
Matt Birney - ASX Code SKM
Matt Birney - I'm Matt Birney and I'm joined now by the Managing Director of Skylark Minerals, Michael Jardine.
Matt Birney - Hi Michael.
Michael Jardine - Hi Matt, thanks for having me on the show.
Matt Birney - Okay, so Skylark Minerals is chasing gold in Côte d'Ivoire on the same West African Greenstone belt that hosts some of the biggest mines on the continent. Its Zaranou project has always had the ingredients, gold in soils along a massive corridor and old artisanal workings scattered literally everywhere, but only a modest resource. That is until now. Skylark has just finished its first proper drill out, and the arithmetic and the resource has changed sharply.
Matt Birney - Okay, Michael, you've just updated the resource at Zaranou, what was it when you bought the project, I think about 10 months ago, and what is it now?
Michael Jardine - Yeah, we did Matt. So just inside of 12 months ago we acquired the project with an initial resource of 364,000 ounces and we've just more than tripled that. We're now a million ounce club with a total contained gold of just under 1.2 million ounces.
Matt Birney - What sort of grades are going?
Michael Jardine - Grading 1.3 grams a ton, which is very much within the peer set for West Africa.
Matt Birney - Well, that's a hell of a quick drill out. How much money did you throw at or or better still, what do you reckon it cost you to drill out each ounce? And what's the gold price today, do you know?
Michael Jardine - It was gold price tracking 4,100s in US dollar terms, so it's an excellent price certainly for anyone in the market producing gold today. We spent about 7 million Australian dollars. That means so the maths would imply over the whole of the uplifted resource number and a discovery cost well under $9 an ounce, which is outstanding work.
Matt Birney - Now, this resource sits across three individual resource areas. How many ounces do you have in each? How far apart are they from each other? And do you think they might all link up? It certainly looks like they might on paper.
Michael Jardine - Short answer is yes Matt, we think they do. So we have three deposits located within about 8 kilometers of of of each other in terms of strike distance. So Mbasso has just under 900,000 ounces. That's about 2 kilometers of strike. There's maybe a 1 kilometer gap to Coffee Bean, which has just under 20,000 ounces and very little drilling. You've then got maybe a further 1 kilometer gap currently to get to Ehuasso, which is just over 300,000 ounces. We think they do link up. Obviously we need to drill that a little bit more to prove that theory.
Matt Birney - As best I can tell, this project has a really significant footprint at surface. Tell me, what are you seeing at surface and across what sort of distances?
Michael Jardine - The license area covers just under 50 kilometers of shear zone and we have anomalous soil readings through the entirety of that and no shortage of of areas to go looking. We've got these 2 kilometer long resource footprints inside of that central zone. We have artisanal workings over a much larger area, maybe 10 or 15 kilometers. So we have a lot of places to go looking.
Matt Birney - I note you've just paid another 1.2 million to move from 51% to 90% of this project. So, well done to you, Michael Jardine from Skylark Minerals.
Matt Birney - Thanks for joining me on Bulls N' Bears and remember, we're only here to give you information, not advice, which you should of course seek independently.
Matt Birney - I'm Matt Birney and this is Bulls N' Bears.
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