Australian Mines (ASX:AUZ) has uncovered 14 more gold prospects for its Boa Vista Gold Project in Brazil’s Tapajós Mineral Province.
The business has prioritized four targets — Baixão, Zé do Leicha, Almir, and Jair — for drilling based on data from the VG1 prospect, where the best intercept returned 195.3 gram-meters terminating in mineralization.
Selective ‘high-grade’ rock-chip samples have revealed up to 31 grams per tonne gold (Au) at Baixão, 11.1g/t Au at Jair, and 5.6g/t Au at Zé do Leicha, indicating the possibility of numerous gold-bearing sites beyond VG1.
The remaining ten targets will be evaluated and graded when more geological data becomes available.
According to incoming Managing Director Andrew Nesbitt, the success of the VG1 drilling provides a solid foundation for expanding exploration across the gold tenure package.
“The performance of the VG1 drilling program has given Australian Mines a solid foundation to expand exploration over the larger Boa Vista gold tenure package. Recent study has discovered additional prospective structural corridors, alteration zones, gold-in-soil anomalies, and past artisanal workings, reinforcing our belief that Boa Vista has the potential to contain a bigger gold mineralizing system than VG1,” Nesbitt says.
“We are now advancing four priority target areas towards drilling, while continuing systematic work across the broader project area, including planned stream sediment sampling in the underexplored north-eastern portion of the tenure.”
VG1 is still the most advanced target at Boa Vista, with drilling indicating a wide, near-surface gold-mineralized system reaching roughly 700m along a northwest-southeast strike. The mineralised envelope remains open along strike and at depth, with deeper drilling extending to almost 300m below the surface.
Within a structurally controlled intrusive-hosted context, mineralization includes quartz veining, sericitic alteration, sulphidation, and locally coarse free gold.
The Baixão target, located 2km southwest of VG1, has an interpreted footprint of approximately 1.8km by 1km. The target is identified by a coincident gold-in-soil panning geochemical anomaly of more than 50 parts per billion gold, rock-chip samples grading up to 31g/t Au, artisanal workings, and structural continuity with the larger VG1 corridor.
Zé do Leicha is located around 1.5 kilometers northeast of VG1 and measures 2.8 kilometers by 1.5 kilometers. The target includes a gold-in-soil panning geochemical anomaly, grab samples containing up to 5.6g/t Au, previous artisanal workings, and inferred structural corridors.
Australian Mines has planned a comprehensive stream sediment survey program for 135 sites in the project’s underexplored northeastern region. The research will locate more gold opportunities and assess if extensive past artisanal workings are discrete mineralized sources or larger, interconnected structural pathways.
