West African gold explorer lists in Australia

JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – West African gold developer and explorer Tietto Minerals started trading on the ASX on Thursday, following its successful initial public offer (IPO) that raised A$6-million from institutional and high net worth investors, including two global resources funds.

The company issued 30-million shares at A$0.20 a share through its IPO, with 193.1-million total shares on issue. This gave Tietto an undiluted market capitalisation of A$38.6-million upon listing.

Tietto is developing gold projects in Côte d’Ivoire and Liberia. A key focus is the Abujar project in Cote d’Ivoire, which has a maiden Joint Ore Reserves Committee- (Jorc-) compliant mineral resource estimate of 10.4-million tonnes at 2.1 g/t gold for 703 600 oz gold.

This resource was defined in less than two years after Tietto’s acquisition of its Abujar project interests with only 12 171 m of drilling to define the initial Abujar resource.

The company pointed out that Côte d’Ivoire contained the largest proportion of gold-prospective greenstone belts in West Africa and that the country was substantially under-explored relative to Mali, Burkina Faso and Ghana.

At Abujar, Tietto controls three contiguous tenements with a land area of 1 114 km², of which less than 5% has been explored.

The company’s immediate objectives for this year are to expand the Jorc resource estimate at Abujar through deeper drilling and drilling along strike, and start intensive exploration within more than 70 km of additional new strike-length targets at Abujar, which were identified by Tietto’s systematic geochemical work.

Tietto will also expand exploration on its other projects, particularly the Dube South and Cestos projects in eastern Liberia, both of which contain large-scale artisanal workings and have multiple well-defined drilling targets.

MD Dr Caigen Wang said that Tietto was “delighted with the strong support” for its IPO from institutional investors and sophisticated technical resources investors who understand the high-quality and average grade of more than 2 g/t of Tietto’s initial resource.

“At Abujar, Tietto has more than 70 km of mineralised strike to explore. The existing resource forms less than 3 km of that strike length, and has been drilled to an average depth of only 180 m, providing a strong opportunity for Tietto to rapidly expand that resource through planned programmes of up to 30 000 m of reverse circulation and diamond drilling during 2018,” he stated.

Tietto’s board and management has strong experience in West African exploration and discovery, and includes founder Wang as MD and Blackwood Capital director Francis Harper as nonexecutive chairperson, who was previously chairperson and substantial shareholder of West African Resources. Vital Metals MD Mark Strizek is Tietto’s geological adviser and nonexecutive director.

Hanjing Xu, who has more than 25 years’ experience in China State-owned and international mining companies, is a nonexecutive director.