Expands Spanish Zinc Discovery
Variscan Mines Limited’s (ASX:VAR) latest assay results from underground drilling at the San Jose Mine in Spain have extended the discovery of mineralised lenses below the La Caseta Trend and confirmed high grade mineralisation on the Los Caracoles Trend.
Managing Director and CEO, Stewart Dickson, said both are areas of known mining activity in two separate north-south trends within the Central Zone.
“It is very pleasing to follow up the discovery of new high-grade mineralised lenses below the main gallery with another excellent set of drill results,” Mr Dickson said.
“These results extend the lower lens below the La Caseta Trend to over 400m, which remains open. They also confirm the presence of high-grade mineralisation in the Los Caracoles Trend which has significant potential for discovering additional lenses. In particular drilling to test for lower lying lenses is justified.
“We will be following up these exciting drill results with further assays from drilling over the South West Zone, which is where mine activity ceased in the late 1990s, when zinc prices were approximately 4 times lower than today. We are optimistic that further drilling may yield promising results and if replicated could provide considerable scale and tonnage potential.
“With significant infrastructure in place, the Novales- Udias project, centred on the San Jose Mine has all the constituent elements to advance quickly and seriously consider re-start mining opportunities in due course.”
Highlights
- Drilling has intersected multiple zinc-rich mineralised lenses in the Central Zone of the San Jose Mine
- Southward extension of the lower lenses below La Caseta Trend has been successfully drill- tested and increased the strike length to over 400m
- Reinforcement of the conceptual model of the San Jose Mine as a multi-layered deposit, consisting of multiple vertically stacked, sub-horizontal high-grade mineralised lenses of variable thickness, separated by intervals of dolostone. This is consistent with the generally stratabound character of sulphide orebodies in MVT Pb-Zn districts1
- Further core samples from 30 drillholes have been submitted to ALS for assay testing; results are pending with encouraging occurrences of visible zinc mineralisation from core logging
- Planned diamond drilling campaign of +2,000m now complete
- Follow up drilling campaigns being refined and expected to re-start shortly
The company’s immediate focus is progressing with the following key activities:
- Receiving and interpreting assay results from drilling at the South West Zone of the San Jose Mine
- Mapping and sampling of surface drill targets over the Buenahora license area
- Surface drilling permitting application pending
- Surface and/or follow-up underground drilling in Q3 2021
- Mapping and sampling of drill targets over the Guajaraz Project in Castilla La Mancha
The Novales-Udias Project is located in the Basque-Cantabrian Basin, some 30km southwest from the regional capital, Santander.
The San Jose Mine is nearby (~9km) to the world class Reocin Mine which is the largest known strata- bound carbonate-hosted Zn-Pb deposit in Spain and one of the world’s richest MVT deposit.
For more information visit https://www.variscan.com.au/
