Lake Victoria Gold Intersects 28.71 g/t Au over 2.75 m and 12.20 g/t Au over 4.50 m in Shallow Area C Drilling at Imwelo
Lake Victoria Gold Ltd. has reported high-grade, near-surface gold intercepts from recent HQ diamond drilling at its Imwelo Gold Project in Tanzania, specifically within the planned initial open-pit mining area known as Area C. The company also detailed a parallel metallurgical testwork program conducted at Nesch Mintech Tanzania Limited to determine processing requirements for clay-rich, weathered ore, which will inform the final plant design and flowsheet for the area.
The drilling results highlight significant mineralization within Area C. Hole IMWDR029 returned 28.71 g/t Au over 2.75 m from 21.00 m, including 59.77 g/t Au over 1.30 m from 21.00 m. An individual 0.50 m quartz-vein sample within this interval returned 142.90 g/t Au. Hole IMWDR028 intersected 12.20 g/t Au over 4.50 m from 32.00 m, including 27.94 g/t Au over 1.90 m from 33.00 m, with an individual 0.40 m quartz-vein sample returning 124.83 g/t Au.
Other holes in the program included IMWDR031, which returned 0.96 g/t Au over 2.50 m from 21.90 m, including 3.73 g/t Au over 0.40 m from 24.00 m. Hole IMWDR024 returned 0.70 g/t Au over 1.00 m from 13.00 m and 0.38 g/t Au over 0.35 m from 15.20 m. Holes IMWDR025, IMWDR026, IMWDR027, and IMWDR030 intersected voids created by historical artisanal mining and reported no mineralization. In total, eight HQ drillholes totaling 225 m were completed, spanning approximately 240 m of strike at Area C.
To support the development of Area C, whole-core samples from the eight holes were submitted to Nesch Mintech Tanzania Limited for metallurgical testing. The program aims to determine if clay removal, such as scrubbing or screening, is necessary for the weathered ore. Testing conditions include untreated whole ore as a baseline, washing and desliming, and attrition scrubbing followed by desliming. Additional tests cover grind sensitivity at P80 sizes of 125 µm, 106 µm, and 75 µm, gravity separation, bottle-roll cyanidation, and slurry rheology.
All samples were analyzed by Nesch Mintech Tanzania Limited in Mwanza under Procedure LM-02/1. The laboratory holds ISO/IEC 17025 and ISO 9001 certifications. Internal QA/QC protocols involved submitting every 20th sample as a Blank, CRM, and Duplicate, with all lab results passing quality control. True width has not yet been determined, and the sample type consisted of whole HQ core.
Phase 1 earthworks have commenced at the project, including access-road improvements and plant-site footprint preparation. The drilling and metallurgical results will inform the final Area C process flowsheet, treatment-rate assumptions, and plant configuration.
"These results reinforce the high grade, near surface character of Area C, and the metallurgical program now underway addresses a key input to our flowsheet design. Confirming how the clay rich surface mineralized material behaves, alongside the strong recoveries already established for our sulphide and transitional mineralized material, supports sound plant design decisions and keeps our focus on disciplined capital and execution on the path to first gold," said Marc Cernovitch, President & CEO.