In focus: Capella Minerals
Background
Capella is engaged in the acquisition, exploration, and development of quality mineral resource properties in favourable jurisdictions with a focus on high-grade gold and copper deposits. The company's copper focus is currently on the discovery of high-grade VMS-type deposits within 100%-owned, district-scale land positions around the past-producing Løkken and Kjøli copper mines in central Norway.
Its precious metals focus is on the discovery of high-grade gold deposits on its newly-acquired Finnish properties (Katajavaara, Aakenus), the 100%-owned Southern Gold Line Project in Sweden, and its active Canadian Joint Ventures with Ethos Gold Corp. (TSXV-ECC) at Savant Lake (Ontario) and Yamana Gold at Domain (Manitoba). It also retains a residual interest (subject to an option to purchase agreement with Austral Gold) in the Sierra Blanca gold-silver divestiture in Santa Cruz, Argentina.
Katajavaara and Aakenus JV updates
Capella Minerals has announced that initial exploration programs designed to advance prospective gold-copper target areas on the Katajavaara and Aakenus Joint Venture projects in northern Finland have now commenced. Capella currently holds a 70% interest in the Katajavaara and Aakenus JV, in accordance with the terms of the agreement signed with ASX-listed Cullen Resources and announced on August 24.
The combined Katajavaara-Aakenus project covers an area of approximately 200 sq kms and lies immediately adjacent to the highly-productive Sirkka Thrust Zone, a regional structural corridor within the Central Lapland Greenstone Belt, which is associated with numerous occurrences of both gold and base metals. Significant recent discoveries within the CLGB include Ikkari (Rupert Resources; current Mineral Resource of 49MT @2.5 grams per tonne).
The company's initial focus will be on five main gold and/or copper target areas:
- potential extensions to Outokumpu Oy's Saattopora former gold-copper mining operation, which is entirely surrounded by the Aakenus project;
- potential extensions to S2 Resources' Aakenusvaarus gold project, which is bounded to the E by the Katajavaara project and to the W by Aakenus;
- the Killero copper-gold ("Cu-Au") anomaly, where exceptional Cu-Au values were returned from historical Base of Till ("BoT") drilling by AngloAmerican but never followed up with diamond drilling;
- the Riikonkoski-Lonnakko-Kangas cluster of copper occurrences located along the eastern boundary of the Aakenus project;
- the Kittilan orogenic gold occurrence located in the southern part of the property.
- The company's projects also flank the S2 Resources-Kinross JV area at Home, where Kinross has the option to earn-in to a 70% interest in Home in return for an exploration investment of USD 9.5M (see S2 Resources' News Release dated June 3, 2021).
- Permitting for a high-resolution drone magnetic survey to cover the Katajavaara and Aakenus project areas is expected to be initiated shortly, with the survey expected to commence in late Q1 2022. This data set will allow it to gain a greater understanding of the basement geology and associated gold-copper mineralised systems.
Eric Roth, Capella's president and ceo, said he was encouraged by the early results that have been obtained from work completed on the Katajavaara and Aakenus projects.
"It is quite clear that the Central Lapland Greenstone Belt has, in spite of its potential for new gold and copper discoveries, not seen anywhere nearly as much systematic exploration as its global peers - and we clearly see this upside potential in the target areas that have already been defined at Katajavaara - Aakenus. Finland is also a well-known mining jurisdiction, consistently ranking highly in the Fraser Institute Annual Survey of Mining Companies," he said.
"In the short term, we will continue to incorporate historical data sets into our in-house exploration database, prior to embarking on a high-resolution drone magnetic survey over the entire property before the end of the northern winter. This will then allow us to continue to develop targets during 2022 for follow-up auger (BoT) drilling and ultimately discovery drilling."
I look forward to keeping the market updated as we move our Finnish projects through the targeting process in 2022 and then onwards towards drilling."