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Iceni Gold Limited (ASX: ICL) (Iceni or the Company) is pleased to provide an exploration update on the Guyer Well Target Area.
Highlights
- Geological fieldwork, mapping and rock chip sampling continues along the 15km long Guyer trend.
- Anomalous assays from AC drilling, UFF soils and rock chip sampling, historic workings and gold nuggets have all assisted in identifying a clear exploration focus along the ridge at Guyer North for ~2.5kms.
- The recent discovery of nugget GY-1 at nearly 1.5oz Au further supports the prospectivity of Guyer North.
- Prospecting has discovered over 780 gold nuggets along the Guyer Trend to date.
- More than 80 gold nuggets have been recovered during the last 4 weeks.
- The Guyer North drilling campaign is being designed and prepared for exploration drilling which is expected to commence within weeks.
Technical Director David Nixon commented:
“This new 1.5oz gold nugget, GY-1, is the largest nugget recovered thus far along the 15km long Guyer trend. The nugget was discovered in a saddle along the ridge at Guyer North and shows some signs of transport but retains enough surface features to indicate it hasn’t travelled far. The specimen GY-1 provides further support for the prospectivity of the Guyer North target area.
There is sufficient evidence of gold mineralisation localised along the Guyer North Ridge to justify drill testing.
A drilling campaign is being designed to test across the Guyer North target and along its ~2.5km strike” and will commence within weeks.
During the previous 4 weeks over 80 nuggets have been recovered, bringing the total to date to over 780 nuggets found along the Guyer Trend.
Figure 1: Nugget* GY-1, uncleaned, containing ~1.5oz of gold.
Figure 2: Nugget* GY-1 after cleaning. The nugget has a gold fineness of 99.1% (measured by pXRF).
*Visual estimates of mineral abundance or pXRF analyses should never be considered a proxy or substitute for laboratory analyses where concentrations or grades are the factor of principal economic interest. Visual estimates also potentially provide no information regarding impurities or deleterious physical properties relevant to valuations.
Guyer Well Target Area
The Guyer Well target area lies in the southeastern part of Iceni’s tenure. It lies over a north-northwest striking belt of mafic greenstone sequences, bounded to the west by the Danjo Batholith and to the east by felsic volcanics.
The eastern part of the Guyer Well target area is cut by the north-northwest trending Guyer Fault. The Guyer Fault/Shear is interpreted to be a splay of the main Celia Fault. 15kms of strike of the prospective Guyer Fault is controlled by Iceni within the 14 Mile Well Project.
Figure 3: Interpreted geology and alteration zones of the Guyer Well target area
Much of the central and southern portions of the Guyer Well target area is blanketed by transported cover. The cover sequences consist of palaeochannels covered by sheetwash and alluvial channels with minor residual soils. The northeastern part of the Guyer Well target area occurs over lacustrine clays and sediments associated with Lake Carey.
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This article includes content from Iceni Gold, licensed for the purpose of publishing on Investing News Australia. This article does not constitute financial product advice. It is your responsibility to perform proper due diligence before acting upon any information provided here. Please refer to our full disclaimer here.
ICL:AU
Navigating Uncertainty: How Trump's Tariffs Are Affecting the Gold Market
Read on to learn how tariffs have affected the gold market and price so far.
How have tariffs affected the gold price?
The gold price has been on the rise since the beginning of the year. After briefly touching the US$3,500 per ounce level in May, it has pulled back and was trading just under US$3,400 as of Tuesday (August 26).
Gold price, January 1 to August 26, 2025.
Chart via TradingEconomics.
Although some of its increase is attributable to the points mentioned above, a significant portion is owed to a lack of information surrounding US President Donald Trump’s tariff policies.
Initially there was no clarity on what or who was being tariffed, or when the levies would ultimately be implemented, and investors started to move into gold for greater stability and portfolio diversification.
Uncertainty about whether gold would be tariffed also had an effect, prompting traders in the US to import physical gold; this created a price differential between New York futures and the London spot price.
Concerns dissipated as the Trump administration began to nail down tariffs, but were reignited once again when US Customs and Border Patrol posted a ruling on July 31 indicating that the 39 percent tariffs against imports from Switzerland would include 1 kilogram and 100 ounce gold bars.
The news caused spot gold to spike more than 3 percent, from US$3,290 to US$3,398, and sent December futures to an all-time high of US$3,549. Meanwhile, traders halted imports of Swiss bars.
After several days of turmoil, Trump said the ruling was incorrect, and the bars would not be included in the tariff measures being applied to other Swiss imports; the gold price then retreated.
How would gold tariffs have impacted the market?
Gold functions as both a commodity and an essential part of the world’s financial system.
One kilogram and 100 ounce gold bars are used to back futures trading, and regular shipments of the metal are needed to settle contracts once they come due. A 39 percent tariff on gold from Switzerland would have been particularly disruptive, as Swiss refineries account for approximately 70 percent of the world’s gold.
According to the UN Comtrade database, in 2024, Switzerland exported more than 1,400 metric tons of unwrought gold worth more than US$106 billion, representing nearly 30 percent of the country’s total exports. Tariffs would have forced US buyers to pay a significant premium for the precious metal versus buyers in London or Shanghai.
Because gold is often used as a store of value in times of uncertainty, any kind of disruption could have had broader implications for investors looking to add stability to their portfolios.
In an email to the Investing News Network (INN), Lauren Saidel-Baker, CFA, an economist with ITR Economics, explained that gold stands out as a unique investment mechanism:
“There are psychological nuances to gold, which is commonly viewed as a safe store of value during uncertain times and an inflation hedge. Overall, the tariff would have added another facet to the already elevated policy uncertainty."
If the tariffs had remained in place, the US gold price would have had to rise to around US$4,700 per ounce to cover levies, while international prices would have remained closer to the US$3,500 mark.
“Tariffs have already complicated supply chains across industries, and this gold tariff would have been another example of added cost and complexity — but in this case, one with the potential to more directly impact investment activities,” Saidel-Baker went on to explain, emphasizing that US investors would have felt the pinch.
Could gold tariffs happen in the future?
Given Trump's unpredictability, especially when it comes to tariffs, it's possible that gold levies could enter the conversation again. However, by and large experts agree that the matter is closed.
“I think it’s pretty clear at this point that there’s no intention to put tariffs on physical gold imports, and I think that would be very damaging and destructive if they did,” Stefan Gleason, CEO of Money Metals, told INN.
Keith Weiner, founder and CEO of Monetary Metals, offered another perspective, saying that although the gold tariff threat is over, the tumult could have long-term effects on the market.
"Once you've put the scare into everybody, you can't just say, 'Oh, sorry, just kidding.' You can't really do that. And so now we've done damage, and we'll see what happens to that spread over time. We'll see how users of the futures market adapt. There are other markets in the world that would be competing for," he explained.
"This hedging business, you know, maybe it moves to Singapore, maybe it moves to Dubai, maybe it moves to London, and the US loses not only a little more trust, but also a little bit of volume on what had been the biggest — or what is currently the biggest — futures market," Weiner added to INN.
Market participants will be watching closely for future impacts on the yellow metal.
Don't forget to follow us @INN_Resource for real-time updates!
Securities Disclosure: I, Dean Belder, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.
Editorial Disclosure: The Investing News Network does not guarantee the accuracy or thoroughness of the information reported in the interviews it conducts. The opinions expressed in these interviews do not reflect the opinions of the Investing News Network and do not constitute investment advice. All readers are encouraged to perform their own due diligence.