Gold Fields inks deal with Radius (November 30, 2001)

Vancouver — Holding a 12% equity stake in Radius Explorations (RDU-V), South African-based Gold Fields (GOLD-Q) has inked a deal with the junior to earn up to a 70% stake over a portion of the Tambor and Bella Vista projects in Guatemala.

The area of interest covers the western 225-sq-km of Radius’s 3,300-sq-km land package in Guatemala. Over the past year, Radius has assessed the grade and geometry of five known gold zones; Sastre, Bridge, Lupita, Valery and TBS, situated in a 6-km-long gold-in-soil geochemical anomaly. The best grades from drilling have come from the Lupita zone some 4-km east of the Bridge zone, where holes returned from 1-to-2.2 grams gold. Mineralization occurs as sulphides in the carbonaceous phyllite unit. Two holes drilled into the Bridge zone intersected anomalous values in the volcanic ash cover. Hole 1 then hit the favourable carbonaceous phyllite unit but returned values only grading 0.56 gram gold per tonne. Collared 100 metres northwest, hole 2 failed to intersect the promising unit. Earlier five of the eight holes drilled into the Sastre zone yielded narrow zones of low grade mineralization occurring in a flat lying zone in amphibolite hosted wall rock. Only three of the holes managed to return grade higher than 1-gram gold per tonne. Hole 2 returned 1.3 grams gold per tonne over 3.1 metres from 33.5 metres down-hole. Hole 3 yielded 1.49 grams gold over 6.1 metres from 18.3 metres down-hole and hole 5 cut 1.3 grams gold over 1.5 metre from 10.7 metre down-hole.

The major can earn a 55% interest by spending US$5 million over 3.5 years, plus an additional 15% by funding a bankable feasibility study.

Radius has $3 million in working capital and now plans on focusing on its surrounding properties.