Stavely Minerals has uncovered high-grade copper-gold at the Thursday’s Gossan prospect in Victoria, with grades of up to 40 per cent copper.
Assays have revealed 32 metres of 5.88 per cent copper, one gram/tonne (g/t) gold and 58 g/t silver, including 12 metres of 14.3 per cent copper, 2.26 g/t gold and 145 g/t silver.
Most significantly, three metres of 40 per cent copper, 3g/t gold, and 517 g/t silver were also found within the 12-metre span.
The breakthrough is due to review of drill core, assay results and other data, which showed that the project was similar to the richest hill on earth, Butte, Montana and the Magma, Arizona copper deposits.
Stavely executive chairman Chris Cairns said it was uncommon to see 40 per cent copper grades over sub-metre intervals, let alone over two metres.
“Those stunning copper numbers are accompanied by very significant gold and silver values as well,” Cairns said.
“The recognition that we should be using a Magma/Butte high-grade structurally-controlled mineralisation model for our exploration drill targeting has been rewarded with spectacular success in the first diamond hole drilled to evaluate a shallow 500-metre-long target at the Ultramafic Contact Fault.”
The company also reports 4.4 metres of 3.98 per cent nickel, 0.23 per cent cobalt, and more than 1 per cent chrome at the same drill hole.
Stavely’s first step-out hole has also intersected a thick zone of structurally controlled semi-massive to massive sulphide mineralisation.
“The new model has significantly expanded our ‘search space’ and a number of previous shallow historical air-core and reverse circulation intercepts of massive sulphides are clearly much more significant than previously thought and are now considered to be high-priority targets for diamond drill testing.”
