Paparoa Gold Project
In its renewal application to NZ Petroleum and Minerals in 2011, the Company reduced the permit area of its Paparoa Gold Prospect ("Paparoa") that overlapped into a National Park by approximately 84 sq km and has received a renewal on Paparoa from NZ Petroleum and Minerals. Paparoa now consists of 178 sq km over the Paparoa Range approximately 15 km north-east of the town of Greymouth and to the west of Alexander River. Numerous gold occurrences are present at Paparoa where historically, approximately 250,000 ounces of alluvial gold was reportedly produced from the Moonlight Creek watershed in the center of the Project, including two of the largest gold nuggets ever recovered in New Zealand, the largest being 87.5 ounces. The Company is planning on extending its current prospecting program at Paparoa during 2012 to further identify additional hardrock sources of the alluvial gold.
Lyell Gold Project
In its renewal application to NZ Petroleum and Minerals in 2011, the Company reduced the permit area of its Lyell Gold Project ("Lyell") by 211 sq km that was outside of the geological boundaries considered prospective for gold mineralization and has received permit renewal over 261 sq km. The Company's Lyell Gold Project lies approximately 40 km northeast of the town of Westport and extends from the northern end of Rough and Tumble Creek to the Glasgow range. Despite the numerous small historic gold mines in the area, including the Red Queen and south to the historic Lyell gold mine, the Lyell region, considered to be the northern extension of the Reefton Gold Field, is substantially underexplored for gold mineralization.
During this past year the Company conducted mapping and sampling around the historic Red Queen mine and identified gold in quartz and arseno-pyrite/pyrite on two separate levels up to ten meters from the historic gold bearing Red Queen vein, that had a reported average grade of 1.4 oz/t (approximately 45 g/t Au) The Company intends on sampling to the south towards the historic Lyell gold mine, and to the north of Rough and Tumble Creek to ascertain the strike extent of gold mineralization in the area.
New Zealand for 2012
Aside from the required prospecting and exploration programs at Alexander River and Lyell, and subject to financing, the Company is reviewing the potential, subject to availability, to conduct a high definition SAM survey on these two tenements. "SAM" or Sub-Audio Magnetics is a high definition geophysical technique based on advanced Australian magnetometer technology that has been used extensively in Australia over the past decade to map sub-surface structure and lithology in a variety of geologic environments.
SAM is considered particularly suited to identifying geological structures hidden by either overlying highly weathered overburden, or in the case of the South Island's West Coast, heavily forested and extremely steep and marginally accessible terrain such as is present on these tenements that has discouraged exploration in the past.
Flagstaff Mountain Barite Project
The Company has expended considerable effort in getting its Flagstaff Barite Project into production this past year in order to produce cash flow to fund the Company's ongoing gold exploration programs. While some cash flow has been produced, it is insufficient to fund the Company's ongoing operations, so additional funding will be required going forward to complete this program.
During the year the Company cleaned up the mine-site and re-established the road accesses to the historic open pit, separated the historic approximately 35,000 ton stockpile into high grade and waste, and drilled and blasted and stockpiled an additional approximately 14,000 tons of ore. The Company screened the barite ore into two stockpiles, one of approximately 15,000 tons of crushed fines for upgrading and one of approximately 20,000 tons of � inch minus for further crushing and upgrading. The Company was unable to complete the upgrading before weather conditions deteriorated on the mountain, so has erected a storage facility in the town of Northport, WA, in order to complete upgrading and processing the raw material to a specific gravity of 4.1 during the winter months.
Archean Star Resources Inc
Early in 2011 the Company provided its shareholders with an approximately 25% share dividend when it spun off its wholly owned subsidiary, Archean Star Resources Inc ("Archean") to its shareholders. Archean was listed on the TSX Venture Exchange on March 26th, 2011, under the trading symbol ASP: TSX-V, and has continued exploring its Gnaweeda Gold Project in the Meekatharra Gold Field in the highly prolific Murchison Gold Belt in Western Australia.
The Murchison Gold Belt that has produced in excess of 18 million ounces of gold, includes Mt. Magnet Big Bell district (8,000,000+ ounces) and the Meekatharra district (3,500,000 ounces). Aside from Archean, other exploration/mining companies in this highly prolific gold belt are Reed Resources Ltd, ("Reed") Westgold Resources, ("Westgold") Silver Lake Resources ("Silver Lake") and Doray Minerals Limited, ("Doray") all ASX listed companies. Reed has recently taken over operation of the Meekatharra, Reedy and Nannine tenements in the Meekatharra district, and has reportedly identified additional resources of approximately 3.29 million ounces of gold, as well as reporting a copper/gold/silver prospect approximately 3 km to the west of their Bluebird mill, and approximately 7 km south of the town of Meekatharra. Doray has recently reported a 329,000 ounce gold resource approximately 40 km north of Meekatharra at its Andy Well project, approximately 10 km to the west of Gnaweeda. Archean is currently conducting a Diamond drill program at Gnaweeda. Kent holds approximately 10,000,000 shares, or approximately 22% of Archean.
ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD
"Graeme O'Neill"
Graeme O'Neill, President
Neither the TSX Venture Exchange, nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange), has reviewed, nor do they accept responsibility for, the adequacy or accuracy of this news release
KEX 2012-01