Soil company strikes gold

Irish firm Conroy Diamonds and Gold has announced that it has discovered larger-than-average nuggets of gold in the soil at one of its sites in County Armagh.

The discovery marks the company's most lucrative finds in Ireland to date.

Soil samples taken from the Clay Lake area were found to contain average gold-in-soil values of more than 50 parts per billion, with one sample reaching around than 1,531 parts per billion - twice the average of the largest find to date.

Professor Richard Conroy, chairman of the firm, stated that "these latest results, with the highest gold-in-soil values encountered anywhere in our licence area" may indicate the origins of a 28-gram lump of gold that was found in the river in the 1980s.

He added that the discovery may be "the jewel in the crown for the company".

Meanwhile, Africa's largest gold miner, AngloGold Ashanti, announced recently that it has encountered its largest finds in the last decade in Colombia.