West Perth-based Ampella Mining Ltd has delivered promising results from its initial exploration programs in the West African country of Burkina Faso.
West Perth-based Ampella Mining Ltd has delivered promising results from its initial exploration programs in the West African country of Burkina Faso.
The company has focused on the largely untapped areas of Burkina Faso after it listed on the Australian Securities Exchange in August 2007.
Ampella, which is looking to discover and develop commercially viable zinc and gold deposits in the prospective Birimian stratigraphy of Burkina Faso, has secured five tenements totalling more than 1,000 square kilometres; two of those tenements contain significant mineralised intercepts obtained from limited previous exploration.
According to Peter Williams, who stepped down as director of exploration to become a non-executive director on May 16, Ampella started out with a focus on discovering and mining high grade volcanogenic massive sulphide zinc deposits, which tend to occur in clusters.
Work to date from first pass drilling on the prospect has confirmed this view, with results including two metres at 6.47 per cent zinc and five metres at 3.8 per cent zinc from different prospects.
But the company has been encouraged by results from its gold prospects, and in particular those in the Madougou Project, which is close to Ouahigouya in the north western portion of the country.
"Our Dore prospect first pass drill results have confirmed the potential of the prospect to host a large mineralised gold system, and this is a small portion of our land package at Madougou Project, with results including six metres at 3.4 grams per tonne gold and 10m at 1.6 grams per tonne gold in altered fresh rock," he said.
"We're not even a year old and the exciting thing is we've got a team of eight very experienced local staff over in Burkina, which includes three geologists and three field people, and we've just gotten on with it.
Mr Williams said West Africa was a "well endowed" place for gold exploration, which was made easier when the previously French-colonised Burkina Faso began changing legislation between 1997 and 2003.
He said recent changes to the law, such as tax breaks for companies and the cutting back of bureaucratic red tape, had largely opened to door for Australian companies like Ampella, Gryphon Resources Inc and AIM Resources to begin operations.
"The rise in price in the commodity process has also helped," he said.
Subiaco-based Paladin Energy Ltd and West Perth-based West Australian Metals Ltd are other WA companies to have successful exploration programs in regions of West Africa.
West Australian Metals has a uranium project in Namibia, which the company says has potential to add an additional 17 to 28 million pounds of yellowcake (U308).
The company said further drilling would be conducted to extend the known area of mineralisation, while regional exploration on the project area - which covers 706 square kilometres inland from Henties Bay - would test for both palaeochannel and hard rock mineralisation.
Paladin also operates in the mineral resource sector with a focus on uranium and has projects in Australia and Africa.
Its Langer Heinrich uranium mine, in the west of central Namibia, Southern Africa, is now operational with a targeted annual production of 2.6 million pounds U308 and a minimum project life on current reserves of 17 years.
Construction of the company's Kayelekera Project in Malawi is under way, with production expected to start at the end of 2008.
