Wia Gold (WIA) has confirmed a gold discovery after results from its first three diamond holes of a 12-hole drilling program at the Kokoseb area in Namibia showed high-grade intercepts.
The tests, which were spread across the Kokoseb anomaly, confirm the scale at the Kokoseb gold discovery and have extended the gold-in-soil anomaly a further 900 metres on the eastern flank.
Wia Gold Chairman Andrew Pardey said the company, which is partnering with government owned Epangelo Mining, is now looking at a large-scale opportunity at Kokoseb.
“Not only does Kokoseb have scale, as shown by the most recent soil sampling results and by the in-situ mineralisation intersected in trenches, it also hosts high-grade mineralisation, with all three diamond drill holes returning high-grade gold intercepts,” Pardey said.
Wia Gold now plans to undertake a 20,000-metre reverse circulation drilling program, with the first drill rig to be mobilised later this month.
Epangelo Mining Managing Director, Eliphas Hawala, said the company’s shareholding will continue to decline from the current 49% based on the investments to be made by Wia Gold to realise the Kokoseb project.
“Wia Gold will continue to earn further shares based on their continued investment into exploration,” he told The Brief.
He said the company sorely depends on government budgetary allocation for its operations, including any would be exploration.
“All our EPLs, that is how we finance them. We start with the EPL, do the initial geological work ourselves and in that way, it becomes attractive for people to invest in, because we have done the initial work. As they are coming in, we are diluting,” Hawala said.
Epangelo was created in 2009 by the government to ensure sustainable exploitation of mineral resources, local beneficiation of raw materials and to enter into joint-venture partnerships ‘with interested states and companies with similar objectives and corporate structures.
