Tuesday, 7th June 2005 (2536 views)

The Canadian company Pan-African Mining has revealed that it has found high grade gold deposits in Madagascar and believes they could be commercially extracted.

In an interview via telephone with Reuters, the company's chief executive officer, Irwin Olian, stated today that the first phase of drilling at the western Dabolava concession on Madagascar had revealed high grades of gold.

"We are hoping this is going to be a major mine, an $100 million-plus investment," Mr Olian said.
He added that it depends, however, on the state of the deposit, stating: "we could have a smaller mine, around $20-25 million."

Pan-African's CEO also revealed that yields were 32 grammes per ton of rock in some places - a greater yield than they were expecting to find.

Mr Olian indicated that the next phase would involve isolating parts of the concession, which encompasses 1,825 square kilometres (705 square miles), in order to look for overlapping pockets of the precious metal.

According to mining experts, the Indian Ocean island of Madagascar, the fourth largest island in the world, could have large under-exploited reserves of precious metals and minerals including gold, nickel, sapphires, rubies and diamonds.

 

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