It’s been identified by Indonesian officials as one of the top three priority greenfield gold targets and is now owned by Far East Gold after it finalised the acquisition of Trenggalek, located in East Java province.

The copper-gold project has already seen 17,786m of drilling, 3.675km of airborne surveys, surface geochemistry samples (10,500 soil samples, 5,000 rock chip) and geophysics surveys.

Trenggalek is a 12,813-hectare mining permitted tenement prospective for epithermal and porphyry related gold and base metal deposits area.

It is located within the Sunda-Banda Arc, which Far East Gold says is recognised as an important metallogenic belt that is host to several world-class porphyry and related mineral deposits including Tujuh Bukit/Tumpangpitu, Batu Hijau and Onto/Hu’u.

‘Remarkable’ prospectivity

Last December the company signed a binding sheet to acquire Trenggalek and since May, after negotiating a share purchase agreement, has had full control of the company holding the mining licence, which is valid until June 2029 with the ability to be extended for another 20 years.

Two further payments to the vendors totalling $575,000 remain outstanding.

Chief executive officer Shane Menere said the company in 2019 first became interested in this project because of its “remarkable” prospectivity, its advanced status being already licensed to develop and operate a mine, along with its potential to host significant copper-gold.

“It has been a lot of hard work from our local Indonesian team to get to this point,” he added.

Four priority targets

Four priority targets have been identified: the Sentul-Buluroto, Sumber Bening, Jerambah and Singgahan prospects.

Sentul-Buluroto is a gold-silver epithermal target, with quartz veins up to between 10m and 15m wide. A collective strike length of more than 10km has been identified, with the veins hosting high-grade gold intervals with a broader gold-bearing zone with near surface gold mineralisation.

Sumber Bening consists of copper-gold veining and a porphyry type copper-gold target with a large central quartz zone, 1.6km in strike length.

Jerambah is a porphyry copper-gold target, with four holes drilled, one to 1,022m

Singgahan is similarly a porphyry copper-gold target, also with four holes drilled and with trenching work returning wide copper-gold-molybdenum zones, including 144m at 387 parts per million copper, 0.057ppm gold and 4ppm molybdenum.

Far East Gold’s most advanced project is Woyla, also copper-gold and located in northern Sumatra.