It intercepted 0.3m at 62g/t gold from surface at the 007 zone, part of a wider 1.93m at 13.39g/t, among assays from the first 28 holes reported from the near-complete winter drilling programme.

The company is planning a bulk sampling programme of up to 50,000 tonnes next year and expects to see improvement in the gold grade when bulk sampling the 007 zone, based on the results from bulk sampling Trench 1 earlier this year.

It said the weighted average from the 28 holes at 007 was 3.4g/t, compared with the average grade of 1.3g/t from 11 holes at Trench 1, where bulk sampling returned an average 4.2g/t "over 200% higher than the grade indicated by drilling".

Inventus has released an exploration target range for Pardo of 450,000t-12.5 million tonnes at 4.2g/t-3.5g/t gold for 60,000-1.4Moz.

McEwen's Evanachan Ltd acquired C$180,000 (US$136,000) of units in the first tranche of a placement earlier this month, to increase its stake in Inventus from 22.8% to 24.7% on a partially diluted basis.

Inventus had announced the private placement at 15c per unit, designed to raise $750,000 (US$567,000) primarily for the Pardo project, in October.

Shares in the company had started the year above C30c but fell to 11c earlier this month.

They lost half-a-cent on Friday to close at 14c, capitalising it at almost $15 million.