American West Metals Limited (ASX: AW1) has received “outstanding” first assay results for the diamond drilling programme by the company at the Storm Copper Project on Somerset Island, Nunavut, Canada.
“Assays for drill hole ST22-05 – the first assays to be received for drilling in the current programme – have returned spectacular copper grades over very significant thicknesses,” Managing Director, Dave O’Neill, said.
“These results immediately validate the historical high-grade intersections within the 2750N Zone, and highlight the quality of the Storm mineral system.
“These kind of grades and thicknesses are exactly what we want to see as we work to define a shallow high-grade copper resource.
“The 2750N Zone is currently over 200m long and still open along strike and at depth, with excellent potential for further drilling to significantly expand the high-grade mineralisation.
“Further results for this year’s drilling are imminent and we look forward to reporting these soon.”
ST22-05 was drilled to a downhole depth of 89m and is one of eight drill holes completed to date in the 2022 drill programme that were designed to determine the resource potential of the shallow 2750N Zone.
The drill hole is located on the same section as drill hole ST22-04 (assays yet to be received) and was testing the upper continuation of the deeper mineralisation intersected in ST22-04.
ST22-05 intersected a broad, 60m zone of vein and fracture style copper sulphide mineralisation from approximately 22m downhole. The stronger and more significant mineralisation within this interval consists of breccia and massive sulphides between approximately 38m and 79m downhole that yielded 41m @ 4.18% copper.
A thick zone of massive bornite and chalcopyrite is present between 48m and 53m, which returned an average grade of greater than 24% copper.
A cut-off grade of 0.5% copper is used to define a significant intersection and is based on ore mineralogy, mineralisation habit and expected beneficiation performance.
All drill holes completed at the 2750N Zone have successfully intersected thick zones of breccia and/or massive copper sulphides (mostly chalcocite) hosted within much broader intervals of vein and fracture style mineralisation.
Of the total of 1,534m drilled during the 2022 programme, 997m has been completed at the shallow and high-grade 2750N Zone. The drilling has failed to close off the mineralisation which is over 200m in strike and remains open to the east and west, and at depth.
There is excellent potential for further extensions to the 2750N Zone with strong copper anomalism in soils and rock chips along strike for over 1km from the known mineralisation. Massive chalcocite has been mapped in outcrop on the western margin of the 2750N Zone, with assays of rock chips up to 62% copper.
Forward Programme
Work will continue to progress the near-surface mine development and exploration/discovery paths for the Storm Project in parallel. Further diamond drilling is planned to expand the 2750N Zone, and to define initial resources at the 4100N and 2200N Zones, where high-grade copper mineralisation has been intersected in historical drilling.
Exploration activities including drilling and geophysics are also planned to follow-up the significant new discovery of sediment hosted style copper mineralisation, which is associated with a large EM anomaly to the west of the previously recognized and highly mineralised 4100N Zone.
Beneficiation and metallurgical test work will soon commence on drill core from this year’s program. The aim of this work is to create a definitive flow sheet for a direct shipping ore (DSO) operation from the 2750N Zone mineralisation.
Previous test work on Storm drill core has produced a >53% copper DSO product using a full scale ore sorter and with no further processing or optimisation.
For further information please visit: https://www.americanwestmetals.com/
