VICTORIA Falls Stock Exchange-listed Caledonia Mining Corporation has announced promising results from its recent exploration programme at the Motapa Project, indicating a high likelihood of substantial gold deposits.
Caledonia, a Zimbabwe-focused exploration, development, and mining corporation, owns the gold-producing Blanket Mine and Bilboes Mine in Zimbabwe.
It also controls Motapa and Maligreen gold mining claims.
The Motapa Project, acquired in November 2022, is strategically located adjacent to Caledonia's Bilboes gold project in southern Zimbabwe. Blanket Mine is the miner’s flagship operation.
Caledonia chief executive officer Mark Learmonth said results from sampling at Motapa had delivered encouraging results.
“The drill programme featured generally wide-spaced holes at several prospects on the Motapa lease area and highlighted the presence of widespread gold mineralisation over a combined strike length of more than 9 kilometres,” he said.
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“Motapa sits adjacent to Bilboes, which is where the company plans to develop a major new high grade open pit gold mine. These initial results confirm that Motapa will continue to form a key role in the company’s growth strategy.”
At Motapa, Caledonia noted that the combination of diamond drilling and reverse circulation drilling, designed to test the continuation of sulphide zones of mineralisation below the historic oxide open pits, have returned highly encouraging results.
“In addition, shallower drilling in new target areas has returned encouraging results both in shallower oxide, and deeper sulphide zones,” it said.
“Results included significant high grade gold mineralisation in numerous areas, which will now be the focus for follow up drilling with a view to defining an open pit mineral resource.”
Motapa is located approximately 110km north of Bulawayo in Bubi district.
According to the miner, the tenement is within state land under the jurisdiction of Bubi Rural District and the tenure is held in the form of a mining lease covering approximately 2 200 hectares, which provides for both exploration and mining rights.
“The locality of Motapa is shown relative to other key Caledonia properties. Caledonia’s Bilboes property and associated large scale new development project is located directly to the north of Motapa with Bilboes and Motapa sharing a lease boundary,” Caledonia said.
Caledonia believes that the property presents both greenfield and brownfield upside exploration opportunities.
Further, the proximity to the planned development at Bilboes makes Motapa strategically very important for Caledonia, given the potential synergies between the two.