Once just a topaz and tungsten junior, TopTung has found what it calls “bonanza” gold at a nickel and copper project it plans to acquire in Canada.

The news sent TopTung’s (ASX:TTW) share price up as much as 16 per cent to an intra-day high of 5.7c on Monday.

Sampling at the Lorraine mine in Quebec has returned a hit of 28m at 37.4 grams of gold per tonne (g/t) and 33.7g/t of silver.

Drilling, meanwhile, returned higher grades again of 1m at 44.1g/t gold and 102.9g/t silver.

Anything over 5g/t gold is considered high-grade. Miners often use the term “bonanza” to describe grades that are well above what is considered high grade.

TopTung revealed in August that it was acquiring Australian explorer Zeus Minerals, which has two main nickel and copper sulphide projects in Quebec.

TopTung (ASX:TTW) shares over the past year.
TopTung (ASX:TTW) shares over the past year.

The news came after drilling at its only project, Torrington, “severely reduced the tungsten resource”.

Director Martin Kavanagh says TopTung is still “very much focused on the topaz and tungsten in New South Wales.

“But we felt that we needed another project to add in there mainly because now the next phase of Torrington will be application for a mining licence, which can take quite awhile,” he told Stockhead.

“So we need to continue on with some sort of project corporately. We looked at some opportunities in the current market and looked at cobalt, vanadium, lithium, and nickel obviously came up. So we settled on the nickel project in Canada.”

The Lorraine mine is located in the Belleterre Greenstone Belt, which hosts the Belleterre gold mine that produced 755,000 ounces of gold at an average grade of 10.73g/t.

A single 600,000 tonne structure within the Lorraine mine produced over $100 million worth of metal in less than 24 months, according to TopTung.

TopTung is continuing to review other project opportunities in Canada.

The company is progressing towards a five-hole drilling program targeting high-grade nickel and copper massive sulphides.

TopTung will put the acquisition of Zeus Minerals to a shareholder vote at the upcoming annual general meeting in early October.

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