Titan Minerals Limited (ASX: TTM) is preparing to undertake a significant exploration campaign activity including geophysics, trenching and drilling programmes for the company’s new Copper Duke Project in Ecuador.
Copper Duke is an early stage exploration project located in the Loja province of southern Ecuador, approximately 18km east of the company’s flagship Dynasty gold project.
Titan’s Managing Director, Laurie Marsland, said the company is looking forward to hitting the ground running at Copper Duke.
Our team is very excited about the Dynasty and Copper Duke projects, and the reported exploration results are a continuation of a data integration process to upcycle historical datasets for both of these world class systems.” Mr Marsland said.
“We look forward to updating the market on the considerable work being completed to highlight the value of both our Dynasty and Copper Duke projects as the company works toward both maiden drilling at Copper Duke and a resource estimate later this year for the flagship Dynasty project reporting in compliance with the JORC code.”
Copper Duke is an early stage exploration project located in the Loja province of southern Ecuador, approximately 18km east of the company’s flagship Dynasty gold project. Copper Duke consists of thirteen concessions totalling 130 sq. km situated approximately 5km south of both the Pan American Highway and the city of Catacocha, which is less than 1 hour’s drive west of the regional airport for Loja, the provincial capital city.
The first modern exploration within what is now the Copper Duke Project was part of a United Nations survey initiated in 1968, completing a broader stream sediment geochemistry survey targeting Cu-Mo systems in southern Ecuador and followed by more focused geophysical surveys on identified anomalies.
The programme culminated with drilling in 1978 with two diamond drill holes totalling 440m within the Copper Duke Project area, with assays from drilling returning:
- 33.1m @ 2.5g/t gold, 154ppm copper and 2.4ppm Mo from 9m depth, and 8.4m @ 1.9g/t gold, 294ppm copper and 3.9ppm Mo from 45.3m depth, and
- 45.4m @ 1.9g/t gold, 168ppm copper and 3.0ppm Mo from surface, and 10.9m @ 1.7g/t gold, 857ppm copper, and 2.0ppm Mo from 51.85m depth,
Subsequent exploration by Iamgold Corp. and Core Gold Inc. completed overlapping soil surveys covering an aggregate 14% of the project area returning peak soil values of 7.1ppm gold, 1.6ppm gold and up to 0.67% Cu. Extensive rock sampling defines numerous Au-Cu to Cu-base metal anomalous targets and epithermal to mesothermal vein hosted gold mineralisation.
Titan’s planned exploration will include airborne geophysical surveys for high resolution magnetic coverage and surface sampling programmes extending the coverage of geochemistry across the project, with both geochem and geophysical surveys focused on acquiring systematic data coverage over all the project area. The 2019 trench sampling completed is an initial step in generating systematic geochemistry with further sampling campaigns planned over the next 6 to 8 months with an emphasis on providing a geologic framework for drill targeting planned to commence in 2021.
The project has numerous prospects, most with localised high-density sampling returning high-grade gold and copper-gold anomalism outlining dozens of quality targets for follow-up. There are several modern exploration techniques to be applied from collecting more systematic geochemistry coverage extending out from zones of outcropping mineralisation that may be applied as additional information is collected to better vector exploration into the best target zones for maiden drill testing.
Maiden drill tests for the extensive anomalism is proposed for the December quarter of this year, with diamond drill rigs planned to mobilise from the company’s flagship Dynasty Project and commence drilling while completing a mineral resource estimation in compliance with the 2012 JORC Code for the company’s flagship Dynasty Gold Project.
