Stavely Minerals Limited (ASX: SVY) has received significant new assay results from the ongoing resource drilling programme at the shallow high-grade copper-gold discovery at the Thursday’s Gossan prospect within its 100%-owned Stavely Copper-Gold Project in Victoria.
Executive Chairman, Chris Cairns, said an intensive resource drill-out is currently underway on the south-eastern end of this 1.2km long discovery zone, with in-fill and step-out drilling based on a roughly 40m x 40m drilling grid.
Diamond drill hole SMD074, located in the central Cayley Lode, returned intercepts of: 34m at 0.32% copper from 25m drill depth (supergene blanket); 176-183.6m, 7.6m at 1.36% copper, 0.24g/t gold and 7g/t silver; 193-197.7m, 4.7m at 1.94% copper, 0.27g/t gold and 10g/t silver; and 213.0-234.3m, 21.3m at 1.31% copper, 0.43g/t gold and 6g/t silver.
Mr Cairns said that excluding un-mineralised late dacite porphyry dykes between the three mineralised intercepts, the total mineralised interval in SMD074 in the Cayley Lode is 33.6m at 1.41% Cu, 0.36g/t Au and 7g/t Ag.
Meanwhile, drill hole SMD073, located in the far north-west portion of the Cayley Lode, had been reported as having intercepted an interval of moderate to strong sphalerite (zinc sulphide) mineralisation within pyritic massive sulphide in the Cayley Lode from 359.2m to 365.0m.
This zone has returned: 5m at 1.67g/t gold, 27g/t silver, 2.35% zinc, 0.43% lead and 0.25% copper from 359m down-hole; including, 0.9m at 4.58g/t gold, 51g/t silver, 4.49% zinc, 0.52% lead and 0.42% copper.
The Cayley Lode remains open along strike both to the NW and SE and down-dip.
“Ongoing resource drilling along the Cayley Lode continues to deliver strong copper-gold- silver mineralisation over significant widths. Importantly, the mineralisation remains open in all directions,” Mr Cairns said.
“The recognition of the lateral/temporal evolution of the Cayley Lode from chalcocitebornitechalcopyritesphalerite is entirely consistent with the well- documented spatial zonation observed in the Magma, Arizona lode-style vein system, which we believe to be the correct geological analogue for our discovery at Thursday’s Gossan.
“The significant precious metal abundances in this distal style of mineralisation at the Cayley Lode is also well worthy of follow up.
“SMD073 is a very significant drill hole as it demonstrates that the system is behaving as it should, that the mineralisation does indeed continue below the Low-Angle Structure, and that the strike extent of the mineralised system is now in-excess of one kilometre and remains open in both directions along strike and down-dip.
“The opportunities to grow this discovery at depth and along strike are enormous, but for now our main focus is on an intensive resource drill-out in the central and south-eastern portion of the discovery, leading towards a maiden JORC Mineral Resource which we are targeting in the second half of this year.”