News: Axiom Mining technical review to guide West Guadalcanal exploration

Axiom Mining (ASX:AVQ) has completed a technical review of its West Guadalcanal Project in the Solomon Islands that include latest drilling which returned grades up to 7.85 grams per tonne gold.

The review was carried out over four regions that covered the Taho, Polo and Mount Tanjilli prospects.

Results from the 12 holes totalling 2,050 metres included:

- 7.7 metres at 1.05g/t gold and 13.87g/t silver from 19.6 metres;
- 7 metres at 0.69g/t gold and 28.43g/t silver from 32 metres; and
- 13.5 metres at 0.52g/t gold and 6.52g/t silver from 56 metres.

All targets were ranked by evaluating the geology, geochemistry, geophysics data as well as access to the prospect areas and identification of relevant landowner groups.

Future work programs will utilise this ranking and target those areas most likely to deliver an economic deposit.

Ryan Mount, chief executive officer, said:

“With momentum accelerating on our Isabel Nickel Project towards mine development by the end of the year, it was timely to undertake a technical review of the West Guadalcanal Project.   

“We interrogated our current datasets as well as historical works to provide a regional geological interpretation of merged datasets - this has helped us identify and rank prospects to provide focus for future exploration work.”


Drilling Details

Drill holes HVDD010 and HVDD011 collared in East Taho were designed to test the down dip extension of anomalous mineralisation in a trench with significant results (23 metres at 0.95g/t gold and 21.7g/t silver) and target the porphyry 60 metres east of drill hole HVDD003.

Both holes intersected mineralised breccias associated with sub-vertical arc-normal structures in proximity to diatreme breccia.   

HVDD011 was drilled 30 metres south of HVDD010 and reached a depth of 121.3 metres while HVDD010 was drilled to 162.6 metres - both holes reached final depth in the porphyry.

Grades of up to 7.85 g/t gold were intersected over 0.6 metres from the relatively shallow depth of 19.6 metres.


West Guadalcanal

West Guadalcanal covers 485 square kilometres and is considered under-explored and highly prospective for Southwest Pacific style mineralisation, namely gold-silver-base metal epithermal and copper-gold porphyry including skarn mineralisation.

Recent trenching unearthed more bulk tonnage style results including 30 metres at 1.82g/t gold; 67 metres at 0.55g/t gold and 51 metres at 0.41g/t gold.

Axiom has developed an exploration model for mineralisation at Taho as being hosted in a carbonate base-metal gold low sulphidation epithermal system, a view endorsed by an independent consultant.

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