Bekisopa Madagascar

Bekisopa Iron Ore Project

In June 2014 AKORA acquired a 75% interest in Iron Ore Corporation Madagascar sarl (IOCM) from Cline Mining Corporation. IOCM’s key asset is the Bekisopa iron project which, based on historical exploration and evaluation, has potential for near surface direct ship ore (DSO) and has a stated potential estimated at greater than 150Mt. In July/August 2020 AKORA negotiated acquisition of the remaining 25% of Bekisopa from Cline Mining so that AKORA will hold 100% of the Bekisopa tenements once lodgement and transfer is finalised.

The Bekisopa project consists of three granted research permits (PRs) and one granted small scale mining permit (PRE) covering 93.5 square kilometres and located approximately 220km from the west coast.

The Bekisopa prospect has been the focus of three generations of evaluation, the French Geological Society BRGM in 1959-62, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in 1976-78 and Cline Mining Corp. in 2007-08. Since July 2019 Bekisopa is the main focus for AKORA Resources.

Bekisopa – AKORA’s Major Project

Bekisopa has seen a fair deal of excellent quality and detailed preliminary work carried out since the 1960’s by the French BRGM who over several years did geological mapping, geophysical surveying, trenching (4,000m), pitting (564 pits for 1,862m), drilling (22 holes aggregating 572m), petrology and geochemical analysis (2,581 samples) and identified high grade iron occurrences.

Then the UNDP from 1976 to 1978 built on the BRGM work with further pits, drilling and mapping and reported a Mineral Resource with a stated potential estimated at greater than 150M.

Bekisopa is AKORA Resources major project as we explore for high grade lump iron ore and build on the historical data to define initially some 100m tonnes of iron ore resource.

In late 2014 AKO collected 118 rock chip verification samples over the 5km iron mineralisation strike length. The average iron content of these samples was 66.7% Fe and low impurity levels averaging 1.5% SiO2, 1.0% Al2O3 and 0.075% P.  21 of these rock chip samples graded over 69% iron with the highest grading 69.8% iron.

October 2019 saw extensive activity at the Bekisopa site.  A through and comprehensive geological survey was completed after an extensive fresh review of all historical and company documents and maps.  The observations from this geological survey are;  

• Broad layers of massive magnetite – hematite are traceable over the entire 7km extent of the main Bekisopa tenements.
• Features suggest early structural origin with the layers formed pre weathering as part of an alteration of sedimentary stratigraphy.
• Host rock adjacent to the massive magnetite-hematite layers contain coarse disseminated magnetite-hematite.
  
• Mineralisation is interpreted as a series of parallel layers of massive magnetite-hematite with host rock containing magnetite. The orebody dips steeply to the west.

A comprehensive ground magnetic survey was also completed in October 2019 and the results reported on by Planetary Geophysics, Australia.
The encouraging findings from the ground magnetic survey are;

• Relatively consistent magnetic body extending over approximately a 7km strike.
  
• Northern section of the strike models as a simple magnetic body with depth extent of at least 500 meters and possible width of 150 meters and dipping to the west.
• Central section within the strike length  models as several magnetic anomalies with depths of at least 300 meters and widths of 40 and 150 meters.
  
• Southern section is more complex due to folding and models as several magnetic anomalies with the western body extending to at least 500 meters depth and the eastern body extending to 200 meters depth.

Further detail included in the Historical Exploration Work summary attached.