Royal Road Minerals Limited has announced that it has received all requisite drilling permits for its Alouana copper-gold polymetallic project in the Kingdom of Morocco.
The right to acquire the Alouana project is held by Royal Road Arabia Limited (RRA). RRA is a Saudi Arabian joint-venture company owned on a 50-50% basis by Royal Road and MIDU Company Limited (MIDU). MIDU is a Saudi Arabian investment holding company, headquartered in Jeddah, with interests across various sectors including mining, industrial, real estate development, and utilities. In October 2023, RRA entered into an option agreement to acquire 100% of Izughar Resources S.A.R.L, the Moroccan company holding title to the Alouana licences.
The Alouana Project Area comprises 4 exploration licences located in Morocco’s Eastern Region and totaling 84 square km. Small-scale mining commenced at Alouana at the beginning of the last century. Approximately 45 underground and opencast copper-gold polymetallic workings have been identified from within the area of interest. Opencast mines are developed on shallow, southwest-dipping shear and cleavage parallel zones of unknown total thickness and underground mines are developed on predominantly steep, northeast-dipping vein-breccia bodies up to 3 m wide. There has been no previous drilling conducted on the project.
“Establishing the thickness of shallow-dipping mineralisation at the OPZ is an important initial objective of this drilling programme, followed closely by mapping its lateral extent towards the southwest at the HTZ. Both areas are located along the Alouana hilltop with the potential for good mining economics. Historic tunnels at the EBZ are for the most part concealed at surface and developed along the vein-breccia bodies only, with minimal crosscuts. This makes it difficult to ascertain potential economic thickness until we have drilled them, although there is clear evidence for copper mineralisation extending beyond the extracted veins and immediately into the wall-rock. This drill programme is very much a case of exploring with the drill-rig, objectives are clear and holes have been carefully planned in order to fully test the potential of the mineralised system at Alouana. We are excited to get the programme underway,” said Tim Coughlin, Royal Road’s President and CEO.