Valkea’s 100% owned Paana Project comprises four licence areas (Paana Central, Paana West, Paana W2 and Paanapyytö) totalling 93km2 located 16km from Agnico’s Kittilä mine (the Suurikuusikko deposit).
Regional setting
Paana is located in the same broadly north-south trending belt of sheared and folded greenstone rocks of the Paleoproterozoic-age Kittilä group that host the Suurikuusikko deposit, as well as numerous other prospects including Iso-Kuotko and Sukseton.
Geology
The outcropping geology of Paana comprises deformed, east-dipping succession of mafic to intermediate volcanic rocks of the Vesmajärvi Formation. These are interdigitated with banded ironstones and graphitic tuffs belonging to the Jänisvaara and Porkonen Formations that define kilometre-scale, north-south oriented fold closures, considered highly prospective for gold mineralisation. Two sets of shear zones trending NW-SE and NE-SW displace the folded stratigraphy, providing further potential for structurally controlled gold mineralisation.
Exploration history
S2 Resources commenced commercial exploration through the collection of over 6,000 ionic leach samples over the greater Paana area during the summer of 2018. This programme was successful in identifying a Au-As-Sb anomaly, with a strike extent of 5.6km, trending NNW through the central portion of the Paana Central license, as well as several additional discrete anomalies. The main anomaly was subsequently explored using base of till (BoT) drilling and shallow scout diamond drilling from 2018 to 2019, resulting in the discovery of Aarnivalkea West: a strongly mineralized trend extending 1.3 km. Aarnivalkea West was later investigated with deeper diamond drilling (>100m ) on ~100 to 250 metre centres in 2020 and 2021, totalling 5,200 metres. The focus of the drilling program was to investigate the strike and down-dip extent of shear and vein-hosted orogenic gold mineralisation.
Following the acquisition of the properties by Valkea in 2024, a further 4,450m of diamond core have been drilled at the Aarnivalkea West in 13 drillholes, with every hole intercepting gold mineralisation.
Mineralisation
Mineralisation at Aarnivalkea West is considered to be orogenic in style, associated with intense albite-sericite-carbonate alteration and veining along the sheared contact between intermediate intrusives and more mafic volcanic rocks. Gold is principally associated with disseminated arsenopyrite and pyrrhotite, together with occasional visible gold. Gold mineralisation at the Aarnivalkea West target is considered open at depth, down-dip to the east, and along strike to the north and south.