Junior explorer Matador Mining (ASX:MZZ) has officially kicked off its 2024 gold exploration field season, with reverse circulation (RC) underway at its O-2 target in Newfoundland, Canada.
The $18.88 million market capitalisation company plans to complete 200 holes under the RC program, each to a depth of roughly 10m, to sample the basal till and collect a representative sample of bedrock from the O-2 area.
O-2 lies within Matador’s Malachite prospect along a prospective geological feature on the Cape Ray Shear Zone in Newfoundland.
Matador Managing Director and CEO Sam Pazuki says the start of this winter drilling marks a ‘major’ milestone for the company.
“With our change in strategy to increase the exploration effort in underexplored Greenfield target areas, the subsequent work over the past 2 years along with the accompanying exploration results has allowed us to get to the point where we are now conducting significant exploration activities in the Greenfields areas almost year round.
The O-2 target at Malachite is a high-ranked structural target at the intermediate stage of our exploration pipeline of opportunities. We believe it is highly prospective, with considerable gold-in-till anomalism coupled with compelling geophysics, prospecting and mapping results.”
Pazuki adds that third-party geologists have recently characterised the O-2 area as having similar geology to other major global mineral deposits, including AngloGold Ashanti’s (NYSE:AU) Obuasi mine in Ghana, Vale SA’s (NYSE:VALE) Salobo mine in Brazil, and the Victory-Revenge complex in Western Australia.
Matador’s planned bottom-of-hole and basal till drilling techniques are not routinely used in Canada, according to the company, and even less so in Newfoundland.
However, the company says the techniques have been proven as effective discovery methods in terrain that is affected by deeply weathered or covered profiles, or in regions subject to significant glacial cover — hence the decision to opt for this type of drilling at O-2.
“Given the extensive glacial till and overburden covering most of our tenements and for much of the island of Newfoundland, we believe this approach to exploration has the potential to be transformative in discovery success for our business specifically, and for the province in general,” Pazuki says.
Matador Mining had around C$8.95 million cash at hand at the end of December 2023, according to its latest quarterly report,
Write to Joshua Smith at Mining.com.au
Images: Matador Mining
