As a result of the acquisition of EU Gold Mining Inc. in August 2023, Starcore International Mines Ltd. will assume all of the rights and obligations contained in a Mineral Property Option Agreement that EU Gold entered into with K Mining SARL (“K Mining”), an Ivorian gold exploration company in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. K Mining owns four gold exploration permit applications covering 830 km2, which includes the Kimoukro Project which covers 14.48 km2.
Exploration activity has included remote sensing imagery, soil and rock sampling, optical and electronic microscope, and geophysical surveys. Given the great potential for an economic gold discovery, Starcore intends to carry on with the exploration plan within the Kimoukro Project.
The Kimoukro gold project (the “Property”) is located in the Lac region of central Ivory Coast, some 40 km south of the capital, Yamoussoukro. The property is easily accessible by the A4 paved road, which crosses the property passing from the Kimoukro village; a mid-tension power grid runs parallel to the road. The area is flat. The vegetation is savannah and little forest; cocoa plantations and small-scale agriculture support the local economy. Artisanal mining is widespread in the area and covers over 1 sq km within the property.
The geological context is of a Paleoproterozoic greenstone belt, part of the Birimian orogeny of West Africa.
The Fetekro-Oumé greenstone belt stretches NNE-SSW for over 170 km, and hosts several gold deposits and prospects, with the northeastern portion of the belt is actively explored (i.e., the Toumodi prospect, 15 km west of the property; the B; a new mine will be in production in 2024 (Lafigué mine of Endeavour Mining, with 2.5 MOz Au reserves).
The gold mineralisation in the Fetekro-Oumé greenstone belt includes examples of shear- hosted lode gold, sheeted veins, intrusion-related veins; supergene mineralisation in regolite and soil is also significant. The Property is actually largely unexplored and untested. Highlights from the available information are:
- The local geology is similar to other mineralised sites nearby. The major contacts between greenstone and gneiss, on the west side, along with the presence of syn- post-deformation intrusive bodies and spatially related brittle-ductile structures, are highly perspective for the mineralisation.
- A 0.5 Km2 wide gold anomaly zone in soil exceeding 50 ppb Au, is confirmed in the central part of the Property; the anomaly is part of a broader zone stretching more than 6 Km from the Kokumbo area, and it is open to north and west. Consolidated artisanal mining activity (soil panning) confirms widespread supergene mineralisation.
- Several mineralised veins are being worked by artisanal miners; the mineralised veins are white or smoky, made up by quartz-albite-carbonate; tiny sulphides and free gold have been observed. The veins are present mostly over the granite-granodiorite body in the central part of the Property, however, they cut the other volcano sedimentary units as well. The mylonite zone deforms some early veins and show disseminated sulphides and gold values.
General Setting: The Property area is mainly covered by soil (laterite, saprolite) up to some 10 m thick; locally, a thin alluvial cap is present. The local geology of the Kimoukro Property is therefore sketched on the base of the few outcrops and mining tailings, and accounting for the available geophysical data. Direct information derives almost exclusively from two of the former licenses that were further merged in K Mining SARL.
The local geology is characterised by a sequence of lower greenschist facies rocks of the Paleoproterozoic volcanic arc of the Toumodi volcanic group, including, from the bottom: basalts (massif and pillowed), fine-grained mafic sandstones and siltstones, and interbedded felsic tuffs and mafic sandstone. The sequence is intruded by granitoids, including a siliceous, brecciated granite, a two-micas granodiorite, and some dykes. The southern contact of the granodiorite with the schistose metasedimentary rocks, in the central part of the Property, is marked by a ductile to brittle mylonite zone, which roughly trends WNW. The greenstone belt is surrounded by TTG granites: a granite-gneiss suite representing continental crust, which is found in-between the Birimian greenstone belts.