AngloGold takes significant stake in gold/silver explorer Mariana

In yet another indication that Patagonia’s Deseado Massif is becoming one of the world’s significant gold/silver provinces, junior explorer, Mariana Resources, has announced that one of the world’s major gold miners, South Africa’s AngloGold Ashanti, has taken a 19.9% share in the company for £5.4 million (about US$8.5 million).  Mariana is listed on London’s AIM market and the price AngloGold is paying represents a 41% premium to Mariana’s last closing price (although only a 9% premium on the company’s 60 day volume weighted average price – Mariana’s stock having been hit fairly hard by the September gold price turndown.

Mariana has a number of exploration projects in Argentina and Chile of which its Las Calandrias property in Patagonia is perhaps the most exciting – and the company states that the funds raised from AngloGold will largely be used to facilitate advancement of this wholly-owned project and  also at the 70% owned Sierra  Blanca (70% owned)  property. Mariana has previously announced a  preliminary NI 43-101 compliant  resource for Las Calandrias  of 519,000oz gold-equivalent from only two target areas within just two years of initial discovery.

Of course AngloGold is not new to the area – indeed it is the pioneer gold/silver miner there with its Cerro Vanguardia mining operation which it has turned round over the past few years into being a significant, and profitable, revenue earner for one of the world’s largest gold producers.

In truth, $8.5 million is quite a small investment by AngloGold, but does give it another foothold in the district after it had let go some of its other properties there some time back.  What though perhaps makes Mariana’s Las Calandrias project of particular interest is that Mariana has defined what could become a bulk mining relatively low grade  gold/silver resource in one of the rhyolite domes which abound throughout the Deseado Massif and have been associated with the more normal very high grade, but narrow, vein systems which most explorers there have been concentrating on.  AngloGold itself at Cerro Vanguardia has been mining a series of such high grade veins from steep sided, narrow, open pits for some years now and is now going underground to exploit them at deeper levels.  Mariana too has some very high grade veins at Las Calandrias, but defining these requires a huge amount of drilling which can be expensive for a junior explorer and a capital inflow from a major will be very welcome for the company.

1 2

Tags: AngloGold, Gold, gold mining, gold mining companies, gold mining industry

Posted by VBN on Nov 20 2011. Filed under Gold. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry