Fresh from further gold success at its prolific Carlow Castle project, Pilbara minerals explorer Artemis Resources (ASX:ARV) has heralded a significant copper and zinc resource upgrade at its nearby Whundo Mine.
The resource bump now sees Whundo sit at an Indicated tonnage of 2.6Mt @ 1.14% copper and 1.14% zinc for 30,266t contained Copper and 30,289t contained Zinc.
Whundo’s impressive tonnage follows RC drilling at site aiming to verify older non-JORC compliant drilling and to increase the data points available at the upper levels of the mineralisation.
The Whundo deposit occurs in two zones, Whundo and Whundo West, and the recent exploration involved both infill drilling as well as hitting previously drilled historic areas to verify data.
Commenting on recent performance, Artemis Chief Executive Officer Wayne Bramwell said:
This resource upgrade has seen a circa 30% uplift in the Whundo sulphide resource to 2.2Mt and contained copper and zinc metal tonnes has grown significantly to ≈60,000t combined. The shallow oxide resource is entirely new.
“Whundo was shut down in 2008 due to low copper and zinc prices. It is a valuable asset, considering it is an approved Mining Lease and is so close to our Radio Hill processing plant.
“The oxide grade of 1.75% Cu is tantalising and with this zone extending from near surface to ≈40m below surface, Artemis is evaluating the integration of SX-EW processing at Radio Hill.”
Whundo sits within approximately 50 kilometres by road from the port of Karratha, but more importantly is only 7 kilometres from the company’s wholly-owned Radio Hill processing plant.
The plant is being developed to handle multiple elements, with a gold circuit completed and plans to handle future base metal operations. Base metal processing is intended to utilise a recently acquired 76m3 flotation circuit.
