Operations
Motapa
In pursuit of Caledonia’s strategy to become a multi asset gold producer in
Zimbabwe, in November 2022 the Company announced that it had purchased
Motapa Mining Company UK Limited, the parent company of a Zimbabwe
subsidiary which holds a registered mining lease over the Motapa gold
exploration property in Southern Zimbabwe.
The Company made the purchase from Bulawayo Mining Company Limited, a privately owned UK company.
Highlights
- Caledonia considers Motapa to be highly prospective and strategically important to its growth ambitions in Zimbabwe in terms of both location and scale.
- Motapa is a large exploration property which is contiguous to the Bilboes gold project in respect of which Caledonia announced that it had entered into a binding sale and purchase agreement in July 2022.
- The project was formerly owned and explored by Anglo American Zimbabwe prior to its exit from the Zimbabwean gold sector in the late 1990s. The project is approximately 75km north of Bulawayo with a mining lease covering approximately 2,200 hectares.
- The Motapa area has been mined throughout most of the second half of the 20th century. Caledonia understands that during this period the region produced as much as 300,000oz of gold. Whilst none of the mining infrastructure remains, the evidence of historical mining will provide guidance to our exploration team in best understanding the prospectivity of the region.
- On 11 November, Caledonia announced the first results from its recent exploration program at Motapa, an exploration project acquired in November 2022, located directly adjacent to the Company’s Bilboes Gold Project in southern Zimbabwe.At Motapa, the combination of diamond drilling (“DD”) and reverse circulation drilling (“RC”), designed to test the continuation of sulphide zones of mineralisation below the historic oxide open pits, have returned highly encouraging results. In addition, shallower drilling in new target areas had returned encouraging results both in shallower oxide, and deeper sulphide zones.The program to date had achieved the initial objectives and included 12,724m of trenching, 4,143m of DD and 5,433m of RC. The drill program featured generally wide-spaced holes at several prospects on the Motapa lease area and highlighted the presence of widespread gold mineralization over a combined strike length of more than 9km. Results included significant high grade gold mineralization in numerous areas (e.g. in particular the Jupiter, Pluvious and Mpudzi areas) which will now be the focus for follow up drilling with a view to defining an open pit mineral resource. Drilling highlights to date include:
- Hole JPRC01 – 12.00m* at 6.36g/t from 81m downhole, RC
- Hole JPRC05 – 13.00m at 5.17g/t from 88m downhole, RC
- Hole PLVRC06 – 7.00m at 3.27g/t from 64m downhole, RC
- Hole MPZRC02 – 4.00m at 10.95g/t from 12m downhole, RC
- Hole JDD08 – 14.00m at 3.20g/t from 63m downhole, DD
- Hole PLVDD01 – 8.00m at 4.00g/t from 74m downhole, DD
*all intersections above are down hole intersections; estimated true widths, all drill hole intersections are quoted in the tables in the press release.
Press release
https://polaris.brighterir.com/public/caledonia_mining/news/rns_tool/story/w0o4zzw
Surface Geology and Main Shear Zones at the Motapa Exploration Project.
