A company which has been searching for gold in Meirionnydd for the best part of 10 years says it has made a ‘significant’ discovery.

Alba Mineral Resources, which last year purchased a 90 per cent stake in Gold Mines of Wales, said it had collected ‘exciting’ initial results from a 2019 soil sampling campaign within its licence area near Dolgellau.

Alba said its Clogau gold project there hosted the high-grade Clogau-St David’s gold mine, as well as the extensive regional target dubbed the Dolgellau gold belt.

Results had been obtained from 525 samples from the ongoing 1,200 sample programme.

Multiple gold-in-soil anomalies were identified away from the existing mine area and not associated with historic mine workings.

Average grades for two of the new anomalies were well above the average gold-in soil grades for Clogau-St David’s and the other historic mine areas.

Alba’s executive chairman, George Frangeskides, said: “These results are really exciting. We have identified multiple gold anomalies along an expanding strike extent of the Dolgellau gold belt, with some of those anomalies occurring in areas where there are no significant historic mine workings.

“This is potentially very significant, in that it supports what we have been saying since the beginning of our involvement at Clogau, which is that the Dolgellau gold belt is a vastly under-explored region, and as such there is a strong possibility of unearthing significant new areas of gold mineralisation, as well as potential extensions to the areas of previously exploited high-grade mineralisation.”

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