Exploration company Conroy Gold and Natural Resources announced this week that it had discovered a previously unknown zone of the mineralised precious metal during its operations in the Clontibret area of Co Monaghan.
Further evidence of high-grade gold deposits discovered at its Clontibret drilling site was detailed in a statement by the company to the stock exchange.
Conroy Gold said initial results of its in-fill drilling programme uncovered grades of just over 25 grammes per tonne of gold over 2.5 metres and 22.37 grammes per tonne of gold over 1 metre.
Company Chairman Professor Richard Conroy said he was “very pleased with these high grades of gold and continuity of mineralisation as we move forward with our plans for the development of a gold and antimony mine at Clontibret.”
The stock exchange statement said: “Initial results of [the] in-fill drilling programme show grades of 25.29 g/t gold over 2.5 metres and 22.37 g/t gold over 1 metre.
“The company has already classified 96 per cent of the gold resources within the current starter pit as being in the indicated category.
“The drilling results to date provide further evidence of continuity of high grade gold mineralisation. These include, in one hole, intersections of 2.5 metres at 25.29 g/t gold at a depth from 83 metres and 1 metre at 22.37 g/t from 95 metres and also include from a depth of 14 metres a 5-metre intersection at 4.46 g/t gold.
“In another drill hole a new mineralised zone has been identified which included 2 metres at 1.47 g/t gold at a down hole depth of 94 metres.”
Significant gold deposits in the Clontibret area had long been a part of local repute but until the Conroy Gold operation it had been considered that the difficulty of extracting the precious metal from the terrain in which it was deposited would make mining operations impractical and potentially unprofitable.
The viability of exploiting the deposits took on significant substance, however, in September of last year, when Conroy Gold announced what it described as its “definitive mining plan” for the project.
The company stated that phase one of the plan would see the building of a starter pit and pit extension, while phase two would comprise underground mining and/or further surface pits.
The in-house preliminary estimates of the capital costs for the initial phase …