Conroy Diamonds & Gold PLC
14 November 2003
CONROY'S QUEST FOR GOLD IN IRELAND GATHERS PACE
- £1.25m Institutional Placement Funds Drilling
- Five Gold Discoveries Point To Large Mineralised System
- Finland: Further Diamond Indicators Encourage
Conroy Diamonds and Gold's discovery in 2003 of two further gold prospects in
County Monaghan, Ireland, added new impetus to the company's quest to establish
the Longford-Down Massif as a new mineral province hosting a major gold
producing region. With the new prospects at Corcaskea and Ballygreany, both
located within 1km of the company's original Tullybuck-Lisglassan find, Conroy
has now made five separate gold discoveries. All lie within a 6.5km long section
of the Armagh-Monaghan Gold Belt, an area of the Massif which is of particular
interest and which currently measures some 20km by 3km.
In the annual report for the year ended May 31, 2003, Chairman Professor Richard
Conroy says the company's continued success in Ireland was achieved against a
very welcome backdrop of a much firmer gold price and renewed investor interest
in the sector. Furthermore, this improvement in market sentiment has been
sustained and enabled the company to raise £1.25m through a share placement to
institutional investors since the end of the financial year. This is
particularly welcome as it will enable Conroy to progress to the next stage of
drilling within the Gold Belt, including more detailed assessment of one or more
of the gold areas it has discovered to date, the chairman adds.
During the year, the company acquired an additional exploration licence in
County Armagh and its total licence area now covers approximately 1,500km2 of
the Longford-Down Massif, including the Armagh-Monaghan Gold Belt.
The Corcaskea and Ballygreany discoveries both originated from large
gold-in-soil anomalies generated by the company's sampling programmes which were
subsequently trenched and diamond drilled. A wide fault zone with gold
mineralisation was outlined at Corcaskea which returned sample values of 4.92g/t
gold over 12m and 2.25g/t over 23m. Ballygreany is regarded as particularly
significant as the gold-in-soil values recorded in that area were unusually high
and included several samples running over 500 parts per billion gold. Trenching
revealed two separate zones of gold in bedrock from which grab samples gave gold
grades of up to 2.25g/t and channel sampling returned 8m grading 0.78g/t.
Various styles of gold mineralisation have been identified in the five
discoveries to date which the company interprets as being part of a larger
mineralised system controlled by common structural elements.
Good progress has also been achieved in Finland, where the company's diamond
exploration programmes yielded more highly encouraging results from the Karelian
Craton near the border with Russia. This included recovery of further
diamond indicator minerals, including the all-important G9 and G10 garnets.
Since these are formed under the same temperature and pressure conditions as
diamonds they are considered to be particularly good indicators of the likely
presence of diamonds. In order to follow the previously identified indicator
trains back to their possible sources, the latest sampling programmes were
targeted 'up-ice' from earlier work. The glacial tills in the company's
exploration areas have been transported only a relatively short distance which
suggests that the source of the indicator minerals already recovered may be
nearby.
The company has based its diamond exploration strategy on the belief that
similar deposits to the giant Grib kimberlite pipe in Russia may also be present
in the Finnish sector of the Karelian Craton. 'Although we are still at an early
stage of exploration, these latest sampling results suggest our strategy is
valid and that we are moving in the right direction', said Professor Conroy.
At year-end, the company had cash resources of €302,835, since supplemented by
the institutional placement which raised a further £1.25m (approx €1.75m).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Annual Meeting: Dublin, December 8, 2003
COPIES OF ANNUAL REPORT AVAILABLE ON REQUEST
Further information:
Professor Richard Conroy
Chairman
Conroy Diamonds and Gold Plc. Tel: 00-353-1-661-8958
Ron Marshman/John Greenhalgh
City of London PR Limited. Tel: 020-7628-5518
Visit website at: www.conroydiamondsandgold.com
This information is provided by RNS
The company news service from the London Stock Exchange
*A Private Investor is a recipient of the information who meets all of the conditions set out below, the recipient:
Obtains access to the information in a personal capacity;
Is not required to be regulated or supervised by a body concerned with the regulation or supervision of investment or financial services;
Is not currently registered or qualified as a professional securities trader or investment adviser with any national or state exchange, regulatory authority, professional association or recognised professional body;
Does not currently act in any capacity as an investment adviser, whether or not they have at some time been qualified to do so;
Uses the information solely in relation to the management of their personal funds and not as a trader to the public or for the investment of corporate funds;
Does not distribute, republish or otherwise provide any information or derived works to any third party in any manner or use or process information or derived works for any commercial purposes.
Please note, this site uses cookies. Some of the cookies are essential for parts of the site to operate and have already been set. You may delete and block all cookies from this site, but if you do, parts of the site may not work. To find out more about the cookies used on Investegate and how you can manage them, see our Privacy and Cookie Policy
To continue using Investegate, please confirm that you are a private investor as well as agreeing to our Privacy and Cookie Policy & Terms.