The Firefinch Ltd (ASX: FFX) share price is having a strong finish to the week.
In morning trade, the lithium and gold explorer's shares are up 8% to a 52-week high of 97 cents.
Why is the Firefinch share price jumping?
The catalyst for the rise in the Firefinch share price on Friday has been the release of a positive announcement relating to its gold operations.
According to the release, recent drilling activities have led to a substantial resource increase for the Viper and N'Tiola Satellite deposits at the Morila Gold Project in Mali.
The release explains that the Viper mineral resource estimate has increased by 128% to 3.27 million tonnes at 1.15g/t gold for 119,000 ounces of contained gold. Whereas the N'Tiola mineral resource estimate has increased by 18% to 2.90 million tonnes at 1.03g/t gold for 96,000 ounces of contained gold.
All in all, the mineral resource for the Morila Gold Project now stands at 2.5 million ounces of gold.
Firefinch's managing director, Dr Michael Anderson, was pleased with the news. He said:
"We set out to develop the satellite pits into a solid and confident source of ore to bridge between the tailings treatment operation that we inherited to full production form the Morila Super Pit."
This investment in drilling has delivered that with now over 200,000 ounces of resource in these two deposits alone and we expect a solid increase in Reserves at these pits to follow. We are already delivering ore from Viper as we start to ramp up to full production from Morila."
But it may not stop there. Firefinch revealed that further drilling is planned at the Morila Gold Project during the course of 2022.
Following today's gain, the Firefinch share price is now up 360% since this time last year.
