Canadian-listed gold exploration company Glass Earth Gold Ltd. (GEL.V) has had "really encouraging" results from its most recent drilling at Muirs Reef prospect on the east coast of New Zealand's North Island, the company's chief executive, Simon Henderson, told Dow Jones Newswires.

Drilling had struck a high-grade interval with gold at 38.4 grams per metric ton, while previous results had shown gold at between 1.5 grams a ton and 4.8 grams a ton, he said.

"This is a good start. We've been working on this project for several years and we've had some very good results but we haven't had high-grade results like this before," Henderson said.

Glass Earth Gold has 10,000 square kilometers of permits for gold exploration in New Zealand plus a small gold mining operation in Otago on New Zealand's South Island. Muirs Reef is 65 kilometers south-east of Newmont Mining's Martha Mine which is a 10 million ounce gold deposit. Henderson said recent results were encouraging as "narrow high-grade (finds) can make a lot of money."

A decision on the feasibility of the prospect remains around 12 months off though.

"We will take three or four months to finish this program and we hope out of that to get a resource and then we'd have another big campaign of drilling," Henderson said.

The company is targeting a million ounces of gold in this prospect.

"Anything over a million ounces would be pretty exciting," Henderson said, although he refused to speculate whether it could be as large as Martha Mine.

--By Lucy Craymer, Dow Jones Newswires; +64-4-471-5990; lucy.craymer@dowjones.com