Exploration

Ghana is currently the largest gold producer on the African continent and as such plays host to a number of globally important gold belts and their associated deposits. The Asankrangwa gold belt is located within the Kumasi basin which is dominated by Palaeoproterozoic metasedimentary and metavolcanic rocks. The belt itself is approximately 200km long and 20km wide and contains numerous significant gold deposits and occurrences. The Asanko Gold Mine holds the largest land package within the belt, with approximately 21,000 hectares of tenure (see figure 1) on this highly prospective and under-explored portion of central Ghana.

Exploration at the AGM is focussed on two priorities:

  • Increasing Reserves and Resources at the known deposits.
  • Delivering discovery of new deposits within the and beyond the existing AGM tenements.

2024 YTD Exploration Highlights include:

Near Mine

  • Drilling at Abore in early 2024 demonstrated that mineralization remains robust to at least 30m below the current known Abore mineralization and remains open to depth. Intercepts included 9m @ 10.8 g/t Au and 22m @ 3.8 g/t Au. Results from the 2023 and 2024 drilling campaigns has resulted in a 45% increase in the Abore Mineral Reserve.
  • Infill drilling of inferred mineral resources at Midras South was completed and a maiden Mineral Reserve of 49k oz was included in the updated 2024 MRMR.
  • Infill drilling at Adubiaso increased confidence in the Mineral Reserve in support of mine planning for potential future mining.

Regional

  • First pass drill testing in Q2 at the Akoma target delivered encouraging results with multiple mineralized intercepts including 16m@ 3.57 g/t Au and 4m @ 31.57g/t Au hosted in quartz shear veins. A phase 2 geophysics and drilling program was initiated in Q4 2024 and will continue through H1 2025.
  • Drilling at the SkyGold B target, designed to test the highest priority areas of the approximately 4 km long gold-in-soil anomaly, began in August 2024. The programme consisted of approximately 5200m of aircore, RC and diamond drilling. Drilling has successfully identified a large regional scale shear zone with an active gold mineralizing system over a length of at least 4km. Drilling intersected gold mineralization in all thirteen fences that were drilled at wide spacing across the target. Best results include 15.8m @ 1.1 g/t Au, 3m @5.1 g/t Au, 11.7m @ 0.7 g/t Au and 21m @ 0.5 g/t Au. These encouraging results will be followed up by a geophysics program in Q1 2025 which if successful will aid in targeting for a potential second phase of drilling.
  • Property wide mapping, prospecting and geophysical surveying continues to identify numerous new greenfields targets which are being actively advanced through the exploration pipeline.
Ghana map

Regional Geology

The geology of the Asankrangwa Belt comprises strongly deformed Birimian meta-sediments, with minor granitic intrusions and mafic igneous rocks. The lithological units are cut by steeply north-west dipping primary and secondary structures. It is this combination of structural architecture and permissive lithologies that have been important in the localization of gold mineralization and provides the capacity for enhanced fluid flow forming major alteration systems associated with the gold bearing systems. The gold mineralization is linked to at least two separate deformation events and fluid emplacement, with many similarities to the gold deposits on the adjacent Sefwi and Ashanti Greenstone Belts.

Much of the Asankrangwa belt geological understanding and prospectivity mapping comes from a combination of airborne geophysical surveys such as VTEM and magnetics, and the wealth of accumulated geochemical and geological data. These datasets have allowed the company to develop our current pipeline of exploration targets.