PAT Panthera Resources Plc

The information contained within this announcement is deemed by the Company to constitute inside information as stipulated under the UK Market Abuse Regulation

4 February 2025

Panthera Resources Plc

("Panthera" or "the Company")

Maiden JORC Mineral Resource Estimate for the Kalaka Project

Gold exploration and development company Panthera Resources Plc (AIM:PAT), with gold assets in West Africa and India, is pleased to announce the maiden JORC compliant Mineral Resource Estimate ("MRE") for the K1A deposit at the Kalaka project located in Mali (the "Kalaka Project").

Highlights

·        Maiden Statement of Mineral Resource Estimate (JORC 2012) for gold at the K1A deposit in the Kalaka Project

·        Inferred MRE of 49.9 million tonnes at a grade of 0.50 g/t Au for 803,000 ounces of gold (0.3 g/t Au cut-off)

Statement of Kalaka K1A Deposit Mineral Resources

Mark Bolton, Managing Director of Panthera, commented:

"The 2024 drilling programme at the Kalaka Project has added substantial value to the Company's West African gold portfolio leveraging shareholders exposure to record gold prices.

The maiden MRE of 803,000 ounces at K1A deposit exhibits good continuity, is near surface and approximately 180 metres wide. Furthermore, preliminary metallurgical testing in 2024 delivered excellent results for both the oxide and sulphide ores.

The Kalaka Project holds the potential for a large-scale, low-grade gold development either by conventional CIL mill or heap leach processing.  Further drilling to the north-east of the K1A deposit MRE has the potential to deliver a multi-million-ounce deposit with the K1A deposit being only one of eleven priority exploration prospects within the Kalaka Project licence."

Background

The Company has assembled an extensive and diverse portfolio of gold projects in West Africa (Figure 1), a region that is now the largest gold producing region globally.  In Mali, the Company operates the Kalaka and the Bassala projects. 

The project is located in southeast Mali, between Morila and Syama gold mines and is approximately 260 km southeast of Bamako. It lies approximately 80 km south of the Morila gold mine (8m oz) and 85 km northwest of Resolute's Syama gold mine (6m oz) and is situated adjacent and to the east of the regional Banifin Shear Zone.

Figure 1: West Africa Regional Geology Plan showing Panthera Project Areas

The primary mineralisation at the K1A deposit, is associated with an intrusive tonalite / micro granodiorite in contact with altered metasediments.  The alteration envelope is dominantly characterized by silica-feldspar flooding and sulphide mineralisation.

Mineral Resources Estimate

A considerable gold system has been identified at the K1A deposit at the Kalaka Project and this announcement reports on the publication of the maiden MRE (JORC 2012).

Following a recent review of all information on Kalaka Project, the Company commissioned its consultants Dr Schadrac Ibrango and Ian S Cooper who both qualify as Competent Persons as defined in the 2012 Edition of the "Australasian Code for Reporting of Exploration Results, Mineral Resources and Ore Reserves" (the "JORC Code" or "JORC") to complete an estimate of mineral resources at the K1A deposit. Dr Schadrac Ibrango is the Company's Consulting Geologist Manager for Burkina Faso and Ian S Cooper is the Company's Consultant for West Africa.

This report stems from a review of the Company's results from recent test work on drill samples that provided encouragement that this low grade, large gold system might respond well to conventional extraction technologies.  This step of reporting a maiden MRE and especially in the formal reporting of upside potential as exploration targets, is expected to allow the Company to consider various options for future work, including additional metallurgical testing to confirm the Kalaka Project's possible commercial viability in a high gold price environment.

The Inferred Mineral Resource Estimate (MRE) as reported in the table below has been reported at a 0.3 g/t Au cut-off:

Statement of Kalaka K1A Deposit Mineral Resources

The MRE has been constrained to maximum depths varying between 150 m and 290 m below surface and widths between 100 m and 180 m depending on the location on the wireframe defined to constrain the estimates (Figures 2 and 3). The MRE has not been constrained within an Economical Pit Shell at this stage of the project development.

The resource has been defined using circa 47 reverse circulation and 21 diamond drill holes, in addition preliminary metallurgical testing has also been completed supporting the potential economic viability of the deposit.

The full unedited JORC compliant Mineral Resource Estimate document titled "Resource Estimate for the K1A Deposit, Kalaka Project, Mali" is available for viewing at:

http://www.rns-pdf.londonstockexchange.com/rns/8180V_1-2025-2-4.pdf

Commentary

The maiden MRE extends approximately 1.0 km along strike with a width of 180 m at the surface and 160 m at base of the resource envelope (Figures 2 and 3).

These ore body dimensions at the cut-off grade at which the resources are reported reflects an intended bulk-mining approach and a CIL plant. The use of a 0.10 g/t cut-off, given the very high current gold price, would deliver about 1 million ounces and this may be an option if a Heap Leach approach is considered for treatment (Graph 1 below).

Open pit bulk mining offers several significant advantages in material transport and processing, reducing labour costs and time required for operations. This leads to lower operating costs and increased profitability while the cost-effectiveness of open pit mining allows for the economic extraction of lower grade ores such as at the K1A deposit.

Figure 2: Plan view of wireframe modelled to constraint the Kalaka Project MRE with the location of section in Figure 3 shown in red

Graph 1: Grade/Ounces Curve using different Cut-offs Parameters

Metallurgy

Metallurgical testing completed by the Company included Leachwell testing and Bottle Roll Metallurgical testing to determine if the ore was amenable to conventional cyanide (CN) metallurgical processing methods.  These initial tests confirmed that the Kalaka Project ore is non-refractory and amenable to simple cyanide leaching with likely good recoveries.

The Leachwell test work results announced on 6 February 2024 indicated that CN extractable gold for the near surface oxide samples reported on average 87% recovery, transitional zone samples reported on average 90% recovery and unoxidized, sulphide-bearing samples reported on average 89%.

The Bottle Roll Metallurgical testing of drill core samples announced on 13 June 2024, showed recoveries between 67% and 88%, a positive result for the coarse size tested (minus 10mm).  All samples tested showed relatively fast cyanide leaching with most gold extracted within 12 hours of leaching.

Further steps in a future metallurgical work programme would include larger-scale leaching to test if this mineralisation might be able to be processed using the cheaper heap leach approach.  If this were to prove positive, the potential for future development of the Kalaka Project and any further similar and adjacent discoveries, would be enhanced.

Exploration Potential

K1A deposit

In addition to the mineralisation as defined in the MRE at the K1A deposit, the Company completed a review of exploration data including the historical drilling data at the Kalaka Project.  Importantly, the Company is yet to drill the northern extension of the mineralisation at the K1A deposit as interpreted from its geophysical and soil geochemical surveys (Figures 4 and 5). For the northern extension of the K1A deposit geophysical anomaly the soil geochemistry that initially identified the K1A deposit, is masked by the flood plain sediments of a drainage system. This exploration target together with several similar targets in the Kalaka Project area (Figure 6) taken together would potentially expand the exploration target to a range of approximately 3 to 5 Moz of gold.

Figure 4: K1A deposit with northern and eastern exploration targets highlighted by background image of IP chargeability anomaly with gold in soil geochemistry.

Figure 5: K1A deposit with northern and eastern exploration targets highlighted by background image of airborne Electro Magnetic (EM) survey image showing the Channel 34 anomaly with gold in soil geochemistry.

Regional Exploration Potential

Several regional exploration programmes including geophysics and geochemical techniques have identified eleven priority exploration prospects (Figure 6) and in particular, the K1B, K1C and the Southern Artisanal Prospects.

Figure 6: Exploration targets in the Kalaka Project tenement area

On the eastern side of the Kalaka Project in the K1B prospect, highlighted by soil geochemistry, sporadic but high gold assays were returned in the rotary air blast drilling and follow up reverse circulation drilling over a strike length of at least 2 km and occurring on a structural discontinuity between conductive and resistive geophysical domains. The eastern most drill hole at the Kalaka Project, air core hole K1BAC001 ended in mineralisation with a metre at 17.7 g/t Au (the bottom 22 metres of the hole was anomalous in gold with values ranging from 0.92 g/t Au to 0.1 g/t Au).

The K1C prospect was identified from soil geochemistry and is located at the southern end of an IP chargeability response. Like the northern extension of the K1A geophysical anomaly (Figure 4) the soil geochemistry at K1C is masked by the flood plain sediments of a drainage system. Three RC drill holes on the southern section (only two sections were drilled) returned significant intersections. K1RC7 intersected 11m at 0.89 g/t Au within a lower grade intersection of 33 metres length. A near surface intersection of 11 metres in hole K1RC8 returned 0.59 g/t Au (hole K1RC8A was abandoned at shallow depth but was anomalous in the top 6 metres).  A diamond drill hole, K1CD002, located 220 metres northeast of the RC hole reported three intersections of 8m, 12m and 3m with gold values in the range 0.1 g/t to 3.0 g/t.

At the southern Artisanal workings prospect, inspection in the field shows that the earlier AC drilling did not test the prospect, those holes were on 50 m centres so only provides spot wide spaced data, with the holes drilled to a maximum depth of 5 to 10 m, straight into hard rock (drill refusal) so the main working trends (Panthera have mapped the workings in detail) were not tested.

Panthera Resources PLC

Mark Bolton (Managing Director)                                                                              +61 411 220 942

                                                                                                            contact@pantheraresources.com

Allenby Capital Limited (Nominated Adviser & Joint Broker)             +44 (0) 20 3328 5656

John Depasquale / Vivek Bhardwaj (Corporate Finance)                                                               

Guy McDougall / Kelly Gardiner

VSA Capital Limited (Joint Broker)                                                                   +44 (0) 20 3005 5000

Andrew Monk / Andrew Raca

Novum Securities Limited (Joint Broker)                                                      +44 (0) 20 7399 9400

Colin Rowbury                                                                                                                                                  

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Qualified Persons

The technical information contained in this disclosure has been read and approved by Ian S Cooper (BSc, ARSM, FAusIMM, FGS), who is a qualified geologist and acts as the Qualified Person under the AIM Rules - Note for Mining and Oil & Gas Companies.  Mr Cooper is a geological consultant to Panthera Resources PLC.

The technical information contained in this disclosure has been read and approved by Dr Schadrac Ibrango who is a Member of the Ordre des Geologues du Quebec (OGQ - Canada) and of the Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Newfound Lands and Labrador (PEGNL - Canada), is a qualified geologist and acts as the Qualified Person under the AIM Rules - Note for Mining and Oil & Gas Companies.  Dr Schadrac Ibrango is a geological consultant to Panthera Resources PLC.

Glossary 

Forward-looking Statements

This news release contains forward-looking statements that are based on the Company's current expectations and estimates. Forward-looking statements are frequently characterised by words such as "plan", "expect", "project", "intend", "believe", "anticipate", "estimate", "suggest", "indicate" and other similar words or statements that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" occur. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from estimated or anticipated events or results implied or expressed in such forward-looking statements. Such factors include, among others: the actual results of current exploration activities; conclusions of economic evaluations; changes in project parameters as plans continue to be refined; possible variations in ore grade or recovery rates; accidents, labour disputes and other risks of the mining industry; delays in obtaining governmental approvals or financing; and fluctuations in metal prices. There may be other factors that cause actions, events or results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. Any forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date on which it is made and, except as may be required by applicable securities laws, the Company disclaims any intent or obligation to update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and accordingly, undue reliance should not be put on such statements due to the inherent uncertainty therein.

**ENDS**