TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Mexico-focused precious metals explorer Newstrike Capital late on Monday reported highlights from an ongoing infill-drilling programme at its flagship Ana Paula project, in Guerrero, to test the margins of the near-surface Breccia zone mineralisation and to test the continuity of the mineralisation at depth, beneath the floating-cone pit.

Among the highlights of six completed drill holes, totalling 4 237.15 m, the company had intersected in drill hole AP-13-162 several mineralised horizons at depth, including 87.08 m of 2.08 g/t of gold from 418.32 m to 505.40 m.

This included 23.42 m of 4.15 g/t of gold from 479.4 m to 502.82 m, and contained a near-surface intersection of 213.45 m of 3.45 g/t of gold from 3.85 m to 217.3 m, which included 20 m of 16.92 g/t of gold from 123 m to 143 m.

Another hole, AP-13-186, intersected 64.4 m grading 4.32 g/t of gold from surface to 64.4 m, including 11.07 m of 12.4 g/t gold from 8.99 m to 20.06 m.

Hole AP-13-190 intersected 62.10 m grading 3.13 g/t of gold from 25.4 m to 87.50 m, including 13.67 m of 6.82 g/t gold from 76.83 m to 87.5 m.

The Ana Paula project is central to Newstrike's 88 000 ha of mineral claims located in the Guerrero goldbelt and forms part of a district-scale mining camp that is host to Torex Gold's advanced Morelos project and to Goldcorp's producing Los Filos mine.

Newstrike in March reported a maiden Canadian National Instrument 43-101-compliant resource for Ana Paula, which estimated the measured and indicated resource to contain 43-million tons of ore grading 1.63 g/t, resulting in about 2.26-million contained gold-equivalent ounces, which comprised 2.2-million ounces at 1.59 g/t of gold and 9.7-million ounces of contained silver at grades of 7 g/t of silver.

The inferred resource was estimated at 1.8-million tons of ore grading 0.89 g/t, containing a possible 60 000 gold-equivalent ounces, comprising 50 000 oz of gold grading 0.78 g/t and 1.1-million ounces of silver grading 18.7 g/t.

The company used a cutoff grade of 0.45 g/t gold equivalent.

The reported estimates assumed a long-term gold price of $1 450/oz and a silver price of $28/oz.

The resource estimate was based on 130 diamond core drill holes totalling 67 943 m, which contained about 45 512 assay intervals, of which effectively all were assayed for gold and silver.