Tony Truelove, the General Manager of Exploration and Business Development with Indo Gold, recently took the time to speak to Metals News at the PDAC 2013 conference. With many changes to the company’s focus, Truelove explained how they are working on multiple continents exploring for gold, molybdenum and base metals in Europe, Africa, East Asia and India.
Indo Gold was formed in 2004 to work on exploration targets in India. Given the current climate in India and the difficulty they are facing in getting project working permits, the company has recently decided to expand their exploration base. The flagship property is still the gold project in the State of Rajasthan, which contains 1.74 million ounces of gold. The company has also added other gold, base metal and molybdenum properties to their portfolio.
IGL drilling program, East Block, Bhukia
Said Truelove, “Indo Gold is a company based in Brisbane, Australia. We have projects located around the world including a 1.7 million ounce gold deposit in India.” Though they are not able to continue to move forward on the gold project at this time, Truelove is optimistic that the project can be expanded in the future into a significant sized deposit. He said, “We see that project as eventually being even bigger, maybe even five to ten million ounces.” Unfortunately, Truelove and his staff have been stalled by the Rajasthan government and their permitting process. Truelove said, “We have been held up by the permitting process for the last five years so we have been looking elsewhere.” In fact, the company is now working on multiple continents on more than just gold projects. Said Truelove, “We have a molybdenum project in South Korea, held by a local subsidiary of Indo Gold. “
Fortunately, the issues in India have not stalled Indo Gold’s growth. Said Truelove, “Indo Gold has roughly 40 million shares on issues and is currently unlisted.” Indo Gold has a group of investors who believe firmly in their Indian gold project and that the company will eventually be provided with its legal rights to this very large deposit. Truelove said, “The main shareholders are funds interested in gold. We raised most of our funding five or six years ago based on our Rajasthan gold project.” The investors are optimistic about the potential for the gold deposit in India. Said Truelove, “The current gold resource is part of a much larger anomaly. We intend to make that into a major gold project.” Currently, there is no work on the project as their permits have run out and they are waiting for the next set of judgments from the Indian court. Truelove said, “We did all the work we could under the previous permit. We have been trying for the next stage of permit for several years. Suffice it to say, we have court protection. We hope to get the permit within the next six to twelve months.”
Geological traverse Ghana
The company quickly adjusted when they were unable to continue work in India. Truelove said, “When we couldn’t’ work in India, we looked initially at West Africa. We are now exploring in three countries there. The current main project of interest is in Liberia where we own 100% of a mineral exploration license adjacent to another gold project that has just announced a 3.8 million ounce gold resource. We have completed the first stream sediment sampling ever undertaken in this area and have identified five anomalies, each about five kilometers long. There is also a lot of artisanal activity, especially around the highest values of gold. Indo Gold now owns 16% of that the West African company, Aforo Resources Ltd, following its demerger from the parent.” Indo Gold has also started work in South Korea. Truelove said, “The next area that Indo Gold looked into was in South Korea. We saw a downstream and upstream molybdenum opportunity, given the large amount of molybdenum consumed in the country, and subsequently secured rights to the largest molybdenum mine in South Korea. It was historically a very high grade mine, averaging 1-5% Mo. We saw potential for extensions of the high grade and also the untested potential for a large low grade “halo” deposit.”
Truelove and Rashleigh Inspecting Adit to Competitor Mo Mine
Another project features tin instead of gold or molybdenum and is located in a historical area of mining in Europe. Truelove said, “The final project is focused on tin. It is on the border of what used to be called East Germany (the Free State of Saxony) and the Czech Republic. The area has been mined since about 1178, so there is a lot of mining history there. It is close to a town called Freiberg. .” Indo Gold is working to get exploration and development moving again, which was stalled several decades ago as Germany was focused on other parts of their economic development. Truelove said, “Since reunification, there has been little work done on the deposit. The Soviet East Germans initially discovered it and did a lot of drilling; identifying what is now one of the largest undeveloped tin inventories in the world. It is grading at 0.77% Sn and has very good by-product credits including zinc, indium, silver and magnetite. The amount of work that has been done there gives us the feeling that we can rapidly convert the mineralisation to JORC status and make the metallurgy work. “Why has the deposit sat for so many years? The technology at the time was unable to separate the metals from each other easily. Said Truelove, “The main challenge of this deposit is that the metallurgy is difficult. The tin mineral cassiterite is very fine grained. The East Germans couldn’t separate the metals with the technology then available.” With improvements in technology, there is now a method to handle the metals that are extracted. Said Truelove, “There is a mine in Tasmania that is extracting metals using a new technology involving very high centrifugal force gravity separation, up to 500G force. We believe we can use that in Germany.”
What are the future plans for Indo Gold in the near term? Said Truelove, “What we’d like to do with Indo Gold is to clean it up and make it all about the gold deposit in India. It is a world class gold deposit. What we are doing at this moment is separating the other assets into West Germany, West Africa and South Korean focused companies. We are looking to self fund these subsidiary companies or merge them with other existing companies.”
http://www.indogold.com.au/
Suite 1, Level 1, 32 Park Road,
Milton, Qld 4064, AUSTRALIA
Tel: +61 7 3217 5100
Fax: +61 7 3217 5211