Savary Advancing its Burkina Faso Gold Project

The grades don’t look particularly good until you consider that Endeavour has published a positive feasibility study on the Hounde Project to the north with an average grade of 1.95 g/t gold and a cut-off of 0.35%. If Savary can develop a similar resource for the Hounde South they might be a takeover target for Endeavour (again).

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TORONTO, ONTARIO–(Marketwired – Jan. 20, 2014) – SAVARY GOLD CORP. (“Savary” or the “Company”) (TSX VENTURE:SCA) today provides an update on its Houndé South property, located in south-western Burkina Faso. Exploration has returned economic grade intercepts from each of the four areas that have been drilled as highlighted below (also see figure):

• Karangosso – 10.14 g/t Au over 10.0 metres and 5.82 g/t Au over 8.0 metres
• Kien – 7.36 g/t Au over 8.0 metres and 2.00 g/t over 21.0 metres
• Kueredougou – 21.13 g/t Au over 3.9 metres*
• Diosso South – 3.44 g/t Au over 14.0 metres*

* Avion Gold Corporation news release January 26, 2010

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The Hounde South Project is owned by Endeavour Mining and is about 60 km south of the Endeavour’s more advanced Hounde Project. Savary Gold is working on the Hounde South project with an option to earn a 100% interest in the project by spending US $3 million in exploration and issuing 19.9% of its shares to Endeavour. Savary’s management includes two former execs from Avion Gold (bought out by Endeavour in 2012). Note that 2 of the 4 highlights listed above are old Avion results from 2010.

A location map of Savary’s Hounde South Property is included below.

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The gold zones in each of these areas are open both along strike and to depth. An updated table presenting the results of the 2013 drill program is attached at the end of this release.

Don Dudek, President and CEO states, “My recent visit to the site has reaffirmed my belief that Savary’s property displays potential for better than average grades and large gold-bearing systems that have the potential to support a right-sized economic zone. While at site, a detailed review of the drill results has led to several highlighted positive observations including the size and grade potential of the unique, intrusive-hosted Karangosso zone, the strong similarities of the Kien zone to Endeavour’s Vindaloo zone and the common high grades encountered in the drill programmes on Savary’s property to date. Interest in projects in Burkina Faso has been rekindled as a result of high grade discoveries by Roxgold, Semafo and Orbis Gold in addition to the recently announced mergers of Volta Resources, Ampella Mining and Teck’s strong financial support of True Gold. Savary’s goal is to complete the option earn-in of the Houndé South property by completing a drill-focused exploration program in the first half of 2014.”

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There is definitely a lot of mining and exploration activity in Burkina Faso these days. Low costs, good infrastructure, a competitive tax regime and stable government have made it an attractive jurisdiction. While we haven’t talked about Savary Gold before, we have talked about True Gold’s Karma Project in central Burkina Faso.

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The Karangosso zone represents a separate mineralized trend and an exciting new type of mineralization in the

project area. At Karangosso, drilling returned intercepts of 10.14 g/t Au over 10.0 metres, 5.82 g/t Au over 8.0 metres and 1.82 g/t Au over 7.0 metres in two holes that clipped the northern end of the interpreted intrusive body. The mineralization is hosted by a deeply weathered, sericite-altered, quartz porphyry felsic intrusion that magnetic data suggests is approximately 1,200 metres by approximately 350 metres in size. The combination of a large target area, good grades and deep weathering, (implies robust metallurgy and cheap mining costs) makes this new occurrence the highest priority target on the property. Several other magnetic lows occur along this contact suggesting other felsic intrusions and new target areas. This contact zone has seen limited to no exploration in the past even though Semafo’s Mana deposit appears to occur in a similar structural position as does Endeavour’s Grand Espoir zone.

Savary’s other zones Kien, Kueredougou and Diosso South lie along a well-defined gold enriched structural corridor, as shown in the compiled soil geochemical data, that extends at least 40 kilometres southward from the Kien zone onto Sarama’s Serakoro 1 property. Management believes that it is highly likely that not only can these current zones be extended along strike and to depth, but, that other zones will be discovered along this trend as well.

Recent drilling at Kien zone displayed gold values associated with strong sericite, pyrite and fuschite altered, quartz veined mafic volcanic rocks that are visually similar to the mineralization style at Endeavour’s Vindaloo zone. Drilling has returned intercepts of 2.0 g/t Au over 21.0 metres and 7.35 g/t Au over 7.9 metres along 800 metres of a minimum 1,000 meter long Au-in-soil anomaly which appear to extend to the north and south.

New holes at the northern end of the Kueredougou zone extended the mineralized zone for 1,000 metres to 2,500 metres along strike with good grade intercepts of 2.51 g/t Au over 18.0 metres including 7.52 g/t Au over 5.0 metres, in hole HS-RC-13-54. The Kueredougou zone is still open to the north where a high quality structural target needs drill testing along with follow-up of high grade drill intercepts.

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There’s a lot going on here.

The high gold values appear to be hosted in narrow structural shears, or planes of weakness which would have been conduits for fluid movement and gold concentration.

While these higher grade shears appear to run along volcanic rock units, the company is also interpreting a larger scale intrusive rock unit (“quartz porphyry felsic intrusion”) which hosts lower grades of gold (see image below). This interpretation is based on drilling, geophysics and soil anomalies. If true, this could be a larger open pit target.

Lastly, the company refers to “deeply weathering”, “robust metallurgy” and “cheap mining costs”. What they are really talking about are the indicators of oxide-hosted gold. When sulfide minerals (like pyrite) get weathered by air and water they essentially “rust” into iron oxides. This releases the small gold particles trapped within them making it easier and cheaper to extract through processes like heap leaching. For comparison, Endeavour’s Hounde project to north consists of more than 80% sulfide-hosted gold, about 10% oxides and about 10% a “transitional” mixture. This essentially makes Endeavour’s Hounde a sulfide-hosted gold project with the higher cost processing and extraction requirements that come with it.

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The assay results reported here represent drill results from previous programs, the most recent of which, was carried out in March and April of 2013. To date, Savary has spent approximately $2.1 of a $3 million work commitment in order to earn a 100% interest in the property from Endeavour Mining. Savary’s goal is to carry out an approximate $1 million drill program from March to May, 2014 with a focus on extending, and better defining, the gold zones at Karangosso, Kien and Kueredougou. The Company’s objective is to work toward publishing a maiden mineral resource estimate as soon as a threshold mineral resource is defined. Once sufficient resources have been defined, management believes the logical next step is to initiate a preliminary economic assessment.

The Houndé South property consists of two exploration licenses, Diosso and Mandiasso, totalling 375 square kilometres and two exploration concession applications totalling 125 square kilometres, and is located in the Birimian age Houndé Greenstone Belt of West Africa, currently the fastest growing gold producing area in the world.

Drilling was carried out by Major Drilling Burkina Faso SA. using a track-mounted, RC drill rig. Sampling of the RC chips was conducted on one metre intervals from surface. Each sample was dried, crushed to 85% passing 2mm and then split to 1.5 kg by riffle splitter. The 1.5 kg, 2 mm split was pulverized to 95% passing 106mm. Fifty grams of the pulverized material was analysed for gold via fire assay with an atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS) finish. Although not accredited, SGS Burkina Faso SA operates according to ISO 17025 standards and institutes a full Quality Assurance/Quality Control (QA/QC) program consisting of insertion of blanks, standard reference material, repeats and reject splits which in total account for up to 25% of all determinations conducted. In addition to SGS QA/QC procedures, Savary Gold instituted its own QAQC program consisting of blind and random insertion of standard reference material (1 in 20 samples), field duplicates (3 in 100 samples) and blank samples (2 in 100 samples). Both Major Drilling Burkina Faso SA. and SGS Burkina Faso SA., are independent of Savary Gold.

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Like most companies operating in this region, the company has used an RC drill rig on this project. RC drilling is significantly cheaper and faster than core drilling, but has some disadvantages which need to be considered when planning a drill program:

• Minor contamination between adjacent intervals can sometimes occur with RC drilling, so may provide slightly thicker intersections of mineralized zones than with diamond drill-core drilling.
• When logging diamond drill-core, geologists can obtain important information about the structure of rocks, such as the orientation of any faults, veins and shears. This is crucial data when planning an underground mine to ensure its stability.
• Geologists can also extract information about the texture of the rock and its fabric, which is often destroyed through RC drilling.
• Metallurgists generally require drill-core to work on when designing the best method for ore extraction. Specific tests such as impact hardness and grindability can be done on drill-core, which cannot be done successfully on rock chips from RC drilling.

That said, mines in the region are typically shallow open pits and RC drilling has a track record of success.

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Don Dudek, P.Geo., President and CEO of the Company and a qualified person under National Instrument 43-101, has reviewed and approved the scientific and technical information in this press release. Mr. Dudek has been leading exploration activities in the Houndé belt since 2010 starting with Avion Gold Corp. and more recently with Endeavour Mining Corp. where he supervised the completion of a feasibility study on Endeavour’s Houndé property.

About Savary Gold

Savary Gold is a Canadian exploration company focused on exploring the Houndé South Gold Property in Burkina Faso. The property is in the Birimian age Houndé Greenstone Belt, which hosts Semafo’s Mana mine and additional gold deposits that are presently subject to extensive exploration efforts (including Endeavour Mining’s Houndé Project and Sarama’s South Houndé Project, which is adjacent to Savary Gold’s property).

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Savary’s 2013 drill results are shown below. The grades don’t look particularly good until you consider that Endeavour has published a positive feasibility study on the Hounde Project to the north with an average grade of 1.95 g/t gold and a cut-off of 0.35%. This with an open-pit and more than 80% of sulfide hosted gold. If Savary can develop a similar resource for the Hounde South they might be a takeover target for Endeavour (again).

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