London-listed natural resource development company Contango Holdings expects to receive the results from an aeromagnetics and airborne geophysics survey of its Garalo-Ntiela gold project, in Mali, to be available in early August.

The survey started and was completed this month.

The company says the project has been drilled extensively previously and, as such, the collection of this data was to further aid direct mine planning activities and support the project’s accelerated development into production.

It notes that the survey also targeted some as yet untested areas within the project area, particularly at Ntiela, where exploration work earlier this year yielded encouraging results.

Contango believes the results of these studies will outline extensions of the G1 and G3 deposits, previously identified as showing the potential to host in excess of 1.8-million ounces of gold.

Ground-based induced polarisation is expected to start on receipt and interpretation of this new data in early August.

Contango further says that the project camp is nearing completion, supporting the permanent presence of up to 20 employees and contractors, along with a secure storage building for drill core.

Expectation remains that Garalo-Ntiela will merit the development of a processing hub capable of supporting multiple openpit operations given the good proximal infrastructure, historical exploration and the orebody’s near-surface location.

“We have received consistently encouraging results from development and exploration activities at Garalo-Ntiela, including recent data from local trenching work and grab sampling.

“The analysis of this highlights the increasing potential that the project will deliver many multiples of the original resource quantum that we originally considered when acquiring Garalo in October of last year.

“Indeed, our work programme over the next few months is designed to specifically direct our development and mine construction work to ensure we choose the optimum path to realise the full potential of this significant gold asset,” CEO Carl Esprey says.