23 June 2015
GOLDSTONE RESOURCES LIMITED
("GoldStone" or the "Company")
Final Results for the 10 months ended 31 December 2014
GoldStone (AIM: GRL), the AIM quoted company focused on gold in West and Central Africa, is pleased to announce, following the change in its financial year end from 28 February to 31 December, its final results for the 10 months ended 31 December 2014.
The results below are extracted from the Company's audited financial statements which will shortly be available to view and download in full at the Company's web site www.goldstoneresources.com. Copies of the Company's Annual Report will be posted to shareholders later this week.
Chairman's Statement
I am pleased to address Goldstone shareholders for the first time as Chairman of the Company following the purchase of a 33.45% equity interest by Stratex International plc ("Stratex") a company which I also chair.
2014 has been a year of significant change.
I was only appointed to the board of Goldstone (the "Board") on completion of the placement to Stratex which raised £1.25 million in October 2014 ("Stratex Investment"). I would like to acknowledge the contribution made by the former Chairman, Jonathan Best, and Directors, Hendrik Schloemann and Benjamin Hill, who both stood down on completion of the Stratex Investment to enable the Board to be restructured at that time. Hendrik remained with the Company as Exploration Executive until the end of May 2015 and I would like to thank him for his input during this time.
I would also like to welcome Neil Gardyne who was appointed 12 March 2015 to the Board to replace Emma Priestley. Emma was nominated to the Board by Stratex at the time of the Stratex Investment but subsequently resigned on her appointment to the board of Stratex, a development which unfortunately undermined her position as an independent non-executive director. Neil has had a distinguished career in the mining industry in Africa, most recently with the New Africa Mining Fund and we welcome his experience.
As noted below in the Chief Executive's report, our exploration activity during the year was constrained by a lack of funds, and much of the time was taken up with negotiating and closing the Stratex Investment.
On completion of the Stratex Investment and with an agreement to concentrate on Ghana, where the Company already has a JORC Code compliant resource, we undertook a root and branch review of the Company's database, including its own work and that of previous operators of the Homase/Akrokerri project.
By pooling our existing knowledge base and with the assistance of an outside consultant with many years' experience in West Africa, it was decided to undertake a limited programme of pitting at Homase/Akrokerri to gain a better understanding of the weathering profile across the project. We then built on this more detailed knowledge to plan and undertake an auger sampling programme, which was completed in April 2015, over areas which were prospective for additions to the known mineral resource. The results of this programme gave us higher quality anomalies, mostly at the base of the overburden, which are expected to be more indicative of underlying mineralisation than earlier soil sampling.
We have reviewed the results of the auger sampling programme and after some infill augering, we plan initially to drill two of the anomalies to the southwest of the current resource on a continuation of the structural trend linking Akrokerri with Obuasi.
We have redefined our strategy in Ghana to concentrate on delineating additional near surface, oxide resources which would be easier to process. We have also had discussions with other operators in the area to determine if a critical mass of oxide resources could be accumulated through co-operation but there is no progress to report as yet.
We have reviewed the potential for the discovery of deeper, 'blind', higher grade underground ore shoots which form the basis for operations at the nearby Obuasi mine of AngloGold Ashanti. There are already indications of such shoots and we have discussed the possibility of carving out a deep target project although these discussions are at an early stage. With a higher gold price these potential deeper shoots could offer a very attractive longer-term future for the project.
With the emphasis on Ghana there has been no material work on our properties in Senegal and Gabon. Efforts continue to bring in joint venture partners to fund further work on these projects.
Since the year end we have concluded negotiations with our partner at Homase, Cherry Hill Mining Company Ltd ("Cherry Hill"), to immediately increase our interest from 65% to 90% at a cost of US$25,000. This excellent development is described in more detail by the CEO but we value the continuing involvement of our partner at Homase and are pleased that they will retain a 10% interest.
The market for exploration shares remains depressed and investors, whether retail or institutional, continue to be averse to the perceived risks of gold exploration. We have sufficient funds to undertake the near surface drilling for extensions to the Company's existing oxide resource in respect of the Homase/Akrokerri project. However any major new exploration initiatives will be dependent on an improvement in the market at which time equity or other financing could be considered.
We welcome the involvement of our new strategic investor, Stratex, and with the continued support from Unity Mining Ltd, the restructured Board and the management, who has coped well with significant transition, I look forward to reporting developments on a number of fronts over the rest of the year.
Christopher Hall
Chairman
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