Albyn
This is a new licence on an area south east of Tokur and Voroshilovskoye. Gold mineralisation has been known in this area since 1901 and it was worked until 1955 for gold and scheelite (tungsten). Mineralisation is in quartz veins similar to those at Tokur (386,000oz gold of P1 category resource). However, the main interest here is in a deposit discovered in the 1980's (a gold-bearing quartz-sericite-albite metasomatised zone within Paleozoic green slates) 2km long (480,000oz gold, P1+P2).
This property was acquired in 2005 and exploration started in 2006 including 28,000m3 of trenching. There are two types of gold mineralisation at Albyn. During previous work, zones up to 7.6m thick and 2.5km lateral extent of gold-bearing (grades up to 11g/t) quartz-albite rocks, in gently dipping (150-300) thrust slices, were identified within Palaeozoic black and green slate sequences. Geophysical data indicate that these zones extend for up to 6km.
In the allochthon (the overlying rock mass) of these thrusts is the Kharginskoye quartz-vein gold-tungsten deposit, which was mined before in 1955, with recorded production of over 200,000 oz of gold and 5.7t of scheelite. Management believes that this mine is not exhausted, and the geologists' opinion is that about 400,000 oz of gold (of grade 8.5-36.9g/t) still remain in the quartz veins, with the prospect of further discoveries.
In 2007 exploration continues in both areas of mineralisation.
