Canadian firm Galantas Gold acquires exploration rights from Gairloch Estate in Wester Ross
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A CANADIAN firm has announced an agreement to prospect for potential gold deposits in Wester Ross.
Galantas Gold Corporation says it has entered into an agreement to acquire a 100 per cent interest and the exclusive rights to explore and develop the so-called Gairloch Project, a 217 km² mineral licence area that covers the Gairloch Schist Belt from the owners of the Gairloch Estate.
The company says it has acquired exploration and developments rights for an initial payment of £347,000 and annual payments of £69,000 beginning in year six.
Mario Stifano, CEO of Galantas, said: “We are excited about this opportunity to secure rights to a highly prospective, 10 km-long gold bearing volcanogenic-massive-sulphide trend that has had very little exploration since the early 1980s, with high-priority targets identified.
“We have seen high-grade gold intercepts at shallow depths in Gairloch’s historical drilling records which were obtained from the British Geological Survey, and are keen to follow up with our own targeting and drill program with the aim of unlocking the first substantial volcanogenic massive sulphide (VMS) deposit in Scotland.
"The host rocks at Gairloch appear to be geologically similar to those in the Trans-Hudson Orogen in Manitoba and Saskatchewan which contain the prolific Flin-Flon and Snow Lake VMS mining camps. Along with our high-grade gold Omagh Project in Northern Ireland, Galantas has secured two emerging underexplored districts with potential to add significant shareholder value.”
The Gairloch Project is a landholding that covers the Gairloch Schist Belt, a Paleoproterozic volcanic arc terrane on the northwest coast of Scotland.
The current licence area includes all mineral rights, other than gold and silver, covering an entire estate of 217 km². An application for an option to a lease agreement for the gold and silver is pending with Crown Estate Scotland, the company said this week.
The project hosts the Kerry Road deposit surveyed from 1977 to 1982 by Consolidated Goldfields, "and remains underexplored".
VMS deposits are major sources of zinc, copper, lead, silver and gold. They often form in clusters in areas of ancient underwater volcanic activity. Because of their polymetallic content, VMS deposits are one of the most desirable deposit types for security against fluctuating prices of different metals, said Galantas.
Based on historical reports from Consolidated Goldfields, the Kerry Road deposit was drill tested in the late 1970s to early 1980s, where 87 drill holes (9189 metres) were drilled. Work was abandoned in 1982 due to low metal prices at the time.
The firm says that other than academic work and national geological surveys, commercial exploration was not conducted over the region until 2018 when GreenOre obtained the licence. A single short hole was drilled in 2018.
Galantas Gold Corporation is a Canadian public company that trades on the TSX Venture Exchange and the London Stock Exchange AIM market, both under the symbol GAL.
It also trades on the OTCQX Exchange under the symbol GALKF. The company says its strategy "is to create shareholder value by operating and expanding gold production and resources at the Omagh Project in Northern Ireland".
