Focus Xplore (AIM:FOX) announced that Phase 1 fieldwork is now underway at its Clarkdon Gold Property in northwestern Ontario, with soil geochemical sampling and geological prospecting under way across two priority target areas.
The AIM-listed exploration company has allocated £23,000 from its recent £0.5 million placing to fund the programme, enough to meet the property's minimum annual expenditure commitment.
Focus Xplore acquired the 18 square kilometre (1,800 hectare) Clarkdon claim package, located 50km northwest of Ignace, Ontario, recently.
The property has received only historical attention: geological mapping in the late 1960s, airborne geophysical surveys in 1970, and a six-hole, 534ft diamond drilling programme in 1971 by Scurry-Rainbow Oil, which intersected a historical intercept of 29ft grading 0.43% copper and 14 g/t silver at the Moss Lake occurrence in the property's north.
No systematic gold exploration has been carried out on the property to date, the company said.
Clarkdon sits within the roughly 2.7 billion-year-old Sturgeon Lake greenstone belt of the Superior craton, with the crustal-scale South Sturgeon Fault Zone crossing its southern portion, a structure the company compares in setting to the Porcupine-Destor and Cadillac-Larder Lake gold corridors of the Abitibi district.
The two target areas, the South Sturgeon Fault Zone and the Central Structural & Magnetic Corridor, have been defined using magnetic and conductive geophysical trends, mapped alteration and sulphide occurrences.
In the southern sector, historical drilling approximately 600 metres east of the property intersected disseminated to massive pyrrhotite-pyrite in sheared volcanic rocks near a granitic contact, but the company notes this drilling carried out very gold assaying, leaving most sulphide units untested for gold.
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The central target area shows linear magnetic trends in legacy airborne data that have never been tested for gold, with one feature weakening at the property's centre, a pattern the company says may reflect hydrothermal alteration associated with structurally controlled gold mineralisation, though it cautions other causes cannot be excluded.
The property's tenure remains in good standing until 15 February 2027 and carries an annual minimum spend commitment of C$34,400, approximately £19,000.
Focus Xplore noted that claims held by Midex Resources border the property immediately to the east, while Glencore Canada holds mineral tenure roughly 7km further along strike.
The Phase 1 soil sampling grids are designed to test whether the geophysical trends identified across both target areas host gold mineralisation, work the company says will determine the next steps for the property.