Alba Mineral Resources (ALBA ) said the first phase of the surface trenching programme over the group’s  100% owned Dolgellau Gold Exploration Project has been successfully completed.

The company unveiled to investors that it has discovered a 2.1m width quartz vein in trench 10, comparable with the widths of the worked veins in the Clogau-St David's Gold Mine.

In total 49 samples were taken including 17 quartz vein samples. There were three minor quartz veins (up to 0.3m wide) in trenches 1 and 3 hosted by greenstone sills and contain clasts of greenstone sill and soft black material assumed to be altered Clogau shale. 

Follow-up exploration work is now planned for this site in 2021 together with trenching over some of the remaining nine gold targets identified by Alba over the Dolgellau Gold Field.

With this first phase of trenching having validated the data obtained from the regional soil sampling programme, Alba intends to roll out further phases of surface trenching in 2021, covering some of the remaining nine gold targets identified over the Dolgellau Gold Field.

The company’s 100% owned Dolgellau Gold Exploration Project encompasses the regional exploration activities being conducted by the Company over the Dolgellau Gold Belt.

The Dolgellau Gold Belt is a 26 km long geological formation in north Wales which incorporates both the Clogau-St David's and Gwynfynydd gold mines and where the Company believes there are strong prospects for discovering new economic gold deposits. 

A surface trenching programme was previously undertaken over one of the ten separate target areas within the Project which showed strong gold anomalism in the 2019 regional soil sampling campaign, but where no significant past mining activity has taken place before.

Alba's Executive Chairman, George Frangeskides said the first phase of the surface trenching campaign as “a real success”. He said, “We have uncovered several quartz veins, including one over two metres in width.  Follow-up work in 2021 will be designed to ascertain the full extent of the vein, and to further sample it for its gold content.”

He added, "This work we are carrying out in the Dolgellau Gold Field, to discover new gold deposits away from the Clogau-St David's and Gwynfynydd Gold Mines, should be seen as a separate exercise to the work we are doing to bring those mines back into production, but is certainly no less exciting.

Shares in Alba Mineral Resources have traded within a range of 0.37p and 0.43p in the past two weeks to open 5.33% lower this morning at 0.375p following the announcement.

Reasons to Follow ALBA

Alba Mineral Resources is a well-diversified mineral exploration and development company which owns and operates mining projects in Greenland, Wales and Ireland. Its strategy is to identify and secure undervalued assets with a diversified commodity mix where there is potential for discovering further unexploited resources alongside the existing mine site. 

Positive Assays and pending JORC Resource newsflow 

Despite losing field time to the COVID-19 pandemic, Alba said it is in a position to execute one of the most significant underground work programmes seen for several decades at its Clogau gold mine in Wales, just as the commodity is reaching all-time highs in value.  

Alba said its mining projects remain on ‘a sound footing’, with JORC resources at both Thule Black Sands and Melville Bay, and plans to drill a maiden JORC resource at Amitsoq in 2021. 

Alba said it did not expect the campaign at Clogau to be affected by Welsh Government coronavirus restrictions which were implemented from 23 October to 9 November 2020.  

Transition from Exploration to Production in Greenland and Wales 

Other ‘significant’ progress has also been made in recent years towards Alba’s ultimate goal of achieving commercial production at one or more of its sites, including at the Thule Black Sands in Greenland, the Amitsoq project in Greenland and the Horse Hill well in Surrey. 

In recent weeks, Alba has announced that surface trenching activities will kick-start this week over the first of the group’s 10 regional gold targets over the Dolgellau Gold Field (DGF). 

The trenching was scheduled to commence last week and will target the first of 10 separate new gold targets over the Dolgellau Gold Field which have previously been identified by Alba. 

Alba said up to eight trenches have been planned in this first phase, each varying in length from 40-90m for a total of 575m, with each trench being 1m wide and up to 2m deep.

Once exposed, the quartz veining and other structures from the trenches, those of which are pictured below, will be sampled, and those samples sent to a laboratory for assaying.  

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