Caledonia Mining’s Motapa site shows encouraging signs of gold mineralisation
Caledonia Mining Corporation Plc has revealed promising initial results from its recent exploration programme at the Motapa site, an exploration project acquired in November 2022.
Located adjacent to the company’s Bilboes Gold Project in southern Zimbabwe, Motapa has shown encouraging signs of gold mineralisation.
The exploration, which involved a combination of diamond drilling (DD) and reverse circulation drilling (RC), aimed to assess the continuation of sulphide zones beneath historic oxide open pits. Results so far indicate significant potential, with both shallow and deep mineralisation identified in new target areas, adding to the project’s prospects for both oxide and sulphide gold zones.
The programme has already achieved substantial exploration milestones, including 12,724 meters of trenching, 4,143 meters of diamond drilling, and 5,433 meters of reverse circulation drilling. With wide-spaced holes drilled across various prospects on the Motapa lease area, the findings highlight a significant stretch of gold mineralisation over a combined strike length of more than 9 kilometres.
Among the high-grade results were several notable discoveries:
- Hole JPRC01: 12.00 meters at 6.36 grams per tonne (g/t) from 81 meters downhole (RC)
- Hole JPRC05: 13.00 meters at 5.17 g/t from 88 meters downhole (RC)
- Hole PLVRC06: 7.00 meters at 3.27 g/t from 64 meters downhole (RC)
- Hole MPZRC02: 4.00 meters at 10.95 g/t from 12 meters downhole (RC)
- Hole JDD08: 14.00 meters at 3.20 g/t from 63 meters downhole (DD)
- Hole PLVDD01: 8.00 meters at 4.00 g/t from 74 meters downhole (DD)
Chief Executive Officer Mark Learmonth expressed optimism about the findings, noting the potential for a long-term expansion of Caledonia’s operations in Zimbabwe.
“The results from Motapa indicate promising mineralisation in terms of width, length, and grade, stretching over more than 9 kilometers,” said Learmonth. “As Motapa sits next to Bilboes, where we plan to develop a new high-grade opencast gold mine, these findings confirm that Motapa will be a key component in the company’s growth strategy.”
The success of the programme at Motapa positions Caledonia Mining well to continue resource definition work, paving the way for a potential opencast mining operation in the region. Follow-up drilling is planned to further delineate mineral resources, solidifying Motapa’s role in Caledonia’s strategic expansion within Zimbabwe’s gold mining sector.
