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Alecto Minerals: New Exploration Programme starts at Aysid Metekel

Contributed by Fox-Davies Capital

Alecto Minerals has announced the start of a new exploration programme at its Aysid Metekel Gold Project following the identification of five high priority targets in December. Aysid Metekel is located in a highly prospective greenstone belt in north western Ethiopia.

A few days after releasing the results of its exploration programme at Wayu Boda in southern Ethiopia Alecto has started its exploration programme at Aysid Metekel.

The Aysid-Metekel gold exploration licence is approximately 50km north and north-east respectively from Nyota Minerals (AIM: NYO) Towchester and Brantham tenements (the Northern Blocks) which are in turn 100km north of Nyota's 1.872Moz at 2.34g/t (indicated and inferred) Tula Kapi gold project. Aysid-Metekel is also approximately 80km from Aydot-Fiti, part of the Metekel Exploration License owned by MIDROC Gold Mine PLC which also owns and operates the Lega Dembi Gold Mine.

Last year Alecto Minerals reviewed and compiled all the available historical data for the Metekel licence which included geological mapping of the entire licence area, regional aeromagnetics, 848 steam sediment samples and mineral occurrence mapping. Numerous historical reports also exist relating to the Aysid-Metekel tenement some of which include more detailed geological mapping, rock chip sample assays and data analysis for various areas within the licence.

Alecto Minerals then began a programme to fill in the gaps in the data and now has a database of over 1,000 stream sediment samples and 576 soil samples. In addition, Aster imagery was acquired for the entire licence and structural interpretation of this and other satellite imagery indicated the presence of prospective NW - N trending dextral shear zones within the licence.

As a result of this work the company identified five high priority target areas for follow up work this year at Beles North, Beles Central, Beles South, Bogiz and Gorshi North.

Alecto Minerals has now established its field crew in the area and commenced this followup work. This involves a comprehensive soil, rock chip and stream sediment sampling programme complemented by additional field mapping in order to advance and further prioritise these five targets.

This work programme will take about 12 weeks to complete and will be managed by the Company's Technical Manager, Niall Tomlinson and recently appointed Project Geologist, Tim Strong.

Although early stage exploration, the license area occurs within a known gold district with existing artisanal working. MIDROC believes the nearby Aydot-Fiti project has potential for moderate to large tonnage, low to medium grade, open pittable gold mine and we suspect that Alecto will initially be looking for something similar.