The ongoing drilling is all centred on Mawson’s wider Rompas-Rajapalot project just south of the Arctic Circle in Finland.
Times may be tough in the mining industry, but that hasn’t prevented Mawson Resources Limited from getting on and doing what it does best: exploring for new gold.
While other peers hunkered down to weather out the storms, the company drilled on its Finnish exploration properties through 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, and now 2016.
The most recent results, from the Palokas project, included 8.4 metres at 4.2 gram gold per tonne from a depth of 206 metres. This hole was drilled around 350 metres along strike from the established mineralised zone at Palokas, and represents the best hit to date outside of the main zone.
What’s more, the type of mineralisation encountered in this latest hole corresponds to mineralisation encountered in another existing prospect 1,300 metres to the south, Rumajarvi.
The business
The ongoing drilling is all centred on Mawson’s wider Rompas-Rajapalot project just south of the Arctic Circle in Finland. The thinking is that this could be a camp-scale discovery, given that gold and uranium have been found within an area approaching 10 kilometres by 10 kilometres.
Prior to the most recent results Palokas has already yielded some impressive hits, including 19.5 metres at 7.4 grams gold and 5.4 metres at 37.6 grams gold. Meanwhile, at the nearby Rompas vein system, Mawson has hit 617 grams gold over seven metres, including one metre at 3,540 grams gold.
Following that hit, Mawson then hit uranium on Rompas too, intersecting 395 grams per tonne gold and 0.41% U308 across 0.4 metres at a depth of 41 metres.
It’s intriguing stuff, and hardly surprising that the company keeps coming back round for further investigations, or that it keeps getting the financing to do so.
But one of the caption headings on Mawson’s website describes the company as a “team of orefinders with years of capital markets experience.” The message is that the Mawson team has delivered before and fully intends to do so again.
Chief executive Michael Hudson started out at Broken Hill, one of the most famous of all Australian mining projects. He then went on to work up exploration projects in Australia, Peru, Argentina, Mexico, Sweden, Finland, Spain and Portugal. He was a founder of Flinders (CSE:FDR), of Tasman Metals (CSE:TSM) and Tinka Resources (CSE:TK).
Fellow director David Henstridge also boasts many years of varied experience in mining and mining finance, while Sandinavian exploration manager Erkki Vanhanen has spent 15 years in the field in project generation. He’s spent time with Areva, and with the widely respected Finnish Geological Survey.
From the boss
“We are pleased to see higher grades develop 350 metres from Palokas,” says Michael Hudson. “More importantly our recent drilling has provided confirmation that Palokas consists of a large, gold-bearing hydrothermal system with multiple alteration styles that affect numerous intervals in a thick stratigraphic package. Drilling continues.”
The share price
Since the beginning of the year the shares have climbed from lows of below C$0.20 to the current C$0.25 price, a rise of 25%. In part this reflects improving sentiment towards the sector as a whole, which had taken a severe beating for several years before a slightly better mood set in in the first quarter of 2016.
But it’s also reflective of a wide awareness of the potential that Mawson is sitting on. After all, even if sentiment is improving the sector is still in a very fragile state, and investors will be being very discerning in picking which companies they are willing to go back into, and which they are not.
From the broker
“Continuity is there and the geological model holds up well,” wrote analysts from Dundee Capital Markets back in February of this year. “The project remains highly prospective with less than 5% of a 3 kilometre long target tested to date.
Source: Proactive investors
