Nov 4 2016
Medgold Resources Corp. (the "Company" or "Medgold") is pleased to announce that it has been granted five exploration licences for precious and base metal mineralization in the Republic of Serbia. A block of three contiguous licences totalling 300 km2 is located in the southeast of the country, bordering Macedonia and Bulgaria. Two licences, each of 100 km2, are located approximately 50 km to the north of the southern licence block. A licence location map can be found on Medgold's website. Exploration activities on these licences will be fully funded through Medgold's Strategic Alliance with Fortuna Silver Mines (see news release dated 13th June, 2016).
Dan James, President of Medgold, commented: "We are very pleased to have received our first exploration licences in Serbia. They cover large areas of highly prospective ground and are under-explored for gold and silver. The licences are the result of a prolonged period of target generation, working with our partner, Fortuna Silver Mines, and a number of consultants, including Dr. Richard Sillitoe. We're looking forward to commencing field work immediately, to ground-truth a series of prospective targets."
The licences are located in the Serbo-Macedonian Massif ("SMM"), a belt of crustal rocks that runs through Serbia along a north-south axis, extending southwards through Macedonia and Bulgaria and into Greece. In Serbia, the SMM is west of, but parallel to, the Timok Belt which hosts a number of copper-gold porphyry-epithermal deposits. The SMM is under-explored when compared to the Timok Belt, having seen lead and zinc exploration work by the Yugoslav government in the 1960s and 70s, but far less exploration post-2000 than the Timok Belt. In Greece, the SMM hosts several well-known gold deposits including Skouries, Olympias and Perama Hill, all of which are owned by Eldorado Gold.
The three contiguous licences are located along the Macedonian and Bulgarian borders, approximately 40 km southeast of the city of Vranje, in southeast Serbia. They cover areas of Palaeozoic metasediments, including calcareous schists and marbles, which have been intruded by a series of Cenozoic porphyritic felsic igneous dykes, and locally covered with recent alluvial sediments. Contact zones between dykes and favourable country rock are responsible for many of the known base and precious metal showings within the licence areas. Fairly extensive exploration was completed by the Yugoslav government in the 1960s and 1970s for lead and zinc. Precious metals are often referenced in the historical and archival exploration documentation, but were not the focus of any exploration efforts, nor systematically documented. Today, it is recognized that these mineralized systems are intermediate-sulphidation epithermal in nature, and their lack of historical precious metal exploration presents significant upside for Medgold.
The two other licences are located approximately 25 km due east of the city of Leskovac. These cover a series of flysch units comprised of limestones and shales which have been intruded by a series of Cenozoic porphyritic rocks. Almost no previous exploration has been undertaken in these areas.
Recently, Medgold purchased an exploration dataset from Dundee Precious Metals, which had in previous years conducted regional exploration campaigns over parts of these licence areas. The data include regional stream sediment sampling results and a number of fairly detailed soil sampling grids over historical showings and gold-anomalous stream sediment and rock chip results. The data are currently being reviewed and will be followed-up with a series of ground-truthing and quality-control exercises.
In the coming months, field crews will be undertaking licence-wide reconnaissance over all licences, as well as commencing a series of systematic soil and stream sediment sampling programs and a detailed review of the historical data.