Copper and gold exploration company SolGold announced on Monday that its Alpala drilling programme has discovered strongly mineralised extensions.
With 11 of the 12 drilling rigs engaged in the programme at the Alpala cluster on the Ecuadorian Cascabel project, infill drilling within the high grade core is predicted to significantly increase the high grade resource tonnage.

SolGold holds an interest in the site through its 85% interest in Cascabel tenement owner Exploraciones Novomining S.A.

Nick Mather, chief executive of SolGold, said: "Rapid developments in block-cave mining efficiencies would further enhance the economic outlook for Alpala. We note, encouraging improvements in Capex, Opex and value for Newcrest's Wafi-Golpu block cave project in PNG, which augers well for the upcoming assessment of the Alpala Project."

Elsewhere on the Cascabel project, drilling at the Aguinaga prospect with the single onsite rig not engaged at Alpala has intersected a quartz diorite intrusion containing porphyry-style veins, visible chalcopyrite and trace molybdenite and bornite mineralisation from 295.3m depth.

SolGold said in a statement that the intersection indicates a significant width to the mineralising system.

The quartz-diorite intrusion is thought to represent the same intrusion that hosts the mineralisation discovered on the surface, which returned open-ended rock-saw channel sample results of 9.0m at 1.01% Cu, and 0.79 g/t Au.

"The early intersection of strong porphyry style veining and strong visible copper sulphide mineralisation confirms Aguinaga as an important second resource target at Cascabel. The diagnostic relationship between magnetic, geochemical, resistivity and chargeability data suggests that Aguinaga may represent a significant copper gold porphyry system with the potential to deliver a step-change to the magnitude and value of the Cascabel project," said Mather.

As of 0859 GMT, SolGold PLC's shares were up by 1.04% at 22.33p.

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