New Vein Discovered At Chinese Project
Silvercorp Metals Inc. (TSXV:SVM) has received promising assay results from its 2020 exploration programme at the HPG mine, Ying Mining District, Henan Province, China.
In total, 13,515m from 150 diamond drill holes, including 129 underground holes and 21 surface holes, have been completed from July 1, 2019 to October 31, 2020. Assay results for 140 holes have been received, with 69 holes intercepting mineralisation.
Nine rigs have been drilling at the HPG mine since July 2020. In addition to infill drill holes targeting areas of known sub-vertical silver-lead-zinc-gold veins previously believed to be uneconomic, the programme discovered vein structures with relatively high gold, low silver-lead-zinc grade mineralisation, such as:
- Hole ZK0912 intercepted a new vein with a 1.03 m interval grading 4.82 grams per tonne (g/t) gold (“Au”), 44 g/t silver (Ag) and low lead (Pb) and zinc (Zn).
- Hole ZK1733 intercepted vein H11E with a 0.98 m interval grading 3.64 g/t Au and low Ag, Pb and Zn.
- Hole ZK1920 intercepted vein H13 with a 3.88 m interval grading 3.18 g/t Au, 52 g/t Ag and low Pb and Zn.
- Hole ZK2723 intercepted vein H10_1 with a 1.05 m interval grading 6.41 g/t Au and low Ag, Pb and Zn.
The drill hole and tunnel results have shown that mineralisation at the HPG mine developed in at least two phases, an earlier phase of gold-bearing structures and later stage silver-lead-zinc mineralization. In many cases, the silver-lead-zinc mineralisation has overprinted the earlier gold-bearing structures, while there are still some gold-bearing structures that have not been overprinted and were overlooked before. Future exploration will investigate such structures with less obvious silver-lead-zinc mineralisation overprinting.
In addition to drilling, a total of 8,684m of exploration tunnels have been developed at the HPG mine during the period. These exploration tunnels (comprising drifting, cross-cutting and raising) were driven along and across major mineralized vein structures to upgrade the drill-defined mineral resources and test for new parallel and splay structures.
