African Consolidated's Zimbabwe zinger

published 13 September 2012

African Consolidated Resources (ACR) has unveiled a major upgrade to the resource estimates for its Pickstone-Peerless gold project in Zimbabwe.

The Africa-focused miner said the new industry-standard JORC estimate for Pickstone-Peerless has been increased from 513,000 ounces (oz) to 3.2m oz, of which over 50% is in the measured and indicated (M&I) category.

This consists of 1.5m ounces extractable through open pit mining at 2.0 grams per tonne (g/t) gold, of which more than 1m oz is in the M&I category, plus 1.7m underground ounces at 4.0g/t gold (with 460,000 ounces in M&I category).

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The firm expects to begin a bank feasibility study this month, targeting over 100,000 ounces of gold per year, nd should kick off production from certain areas of the project in the next 12 months, as it seeks to transform itself into a mid-tier gold production company.

Including ACR's Gadzema Project, 18 miles to the north of Pickstone-Peerless, the total resource of the company's Midland gold projects in Zimbabwe has increased to 4.3 million ounces.

Broker Mirabaud Securities said: "The scale and grade of the revised Pickstone-Peerless resource is compelling, and we would expect the feasibility study to yield a positive outcome, especially given that the company believes around 1.5Moz of the resource (at a grade of 2g/t Au) could be amenable to open pit exploitation."

Shares in the company moved up to 2.65p from 2.5p overnight, before ebbing back to 2.625p in the middle of the afternoon.