Albion’s extensional drilling highlights potential for Collavilla extensions at depth

• Albion drilling confirms gold mineralisation remains open at depth at the Collavilla prospect
• Multi-element assays reveal bonus silver and lead-zinc credits that could enhance project economics
• More assays pending with further exploration underway or planned across the Yandal West project

Special Report: Drilling at Albion Resources’ Yandal West project in WA’s Northeastern Goldfields demonstrates that mineralisation at the Collavilla prospect is open at depth.

The third batch of assays from extensional drilling at the prospect returned significant gold mineralisation at depth with notable results such as 2m grading 11g/t gold from a down-hole depth of 52m within a broader 4m zone at 6.8g/t in hole ALBRC035.

Albion Resources (ASX:ALB) said this was promising as the dip extended ~50m from hole ALBRC006, which returned 11m at 20g/t Au from just 17m, to ALBRC035.

Regional drilling also delivered low-grade gold that warrants follow-up work at greenfields prospects such as Ives Find where gravity surveying, chargeability mapping, geochemistry and structural interpretation recently identified 17 new targets.

Adding interest, select multi-element assaying of four previously reported holes revealed silver and lead-zinc mineralisation associated with gold.

This is highlighted by the re-assaying of hole ALBRC006, which returned 33g/t silver and 0.22% lead+zinc in the 11m intersection at 20g/t gold.

“These results continue to demonstrate high grade mineralisation at Collavilla, where high-grade gold is accompanied by silver and base metal credits that may enhance the prospectivity of the project,” chief executive officer Peter Goh said.

“Importantly, drilling confirms mineralisation remains open at depth, providing strong vectors for the next phase of drilling.

“At the same time, our regional work is validating the fertility of the broader Ives Granite, with only a small fraction of this highly prospective system tested to date.

“The scale of untested ground, combined with upcoming gravity, IP and soil programs, ensures a steady pipeline of catalysts in the months ahead.”

Yandal West project

ALB recently completed its maiden 57-hole RC drilling program totalling 4521m at the Yandal West project within the highly prospective Yandal Greenstone Belt.

At Collavilla prospect, near-surface drilling targeted down-dip extensions of known mineralisation to assess the potential for depth extension to the orebody.

Results received to date highlight strong potential for follow-up drilling to uncover more mineralisation at depth.

Meanwhile, the drilling of several additional prospects to identify the next discovery at the Ives Find prospect area has returned encouraging intersections.

Drilling at the Camp prospect returned intersections of 2m at 0.5g/t Au from 27m and 19m at 0.2g/t from 4m (ALBRC028) while hole ALBRC043 at Collavilla East intersected 2m at 0.4g/t Au within a broader 14m at 0.17g/t from 10m.

At Boiler Room, hole ALBRC042 intersected 4m at 0.2g/t Au from 118m and 3m at 0.2g/t from 7m while hole ALBRC021 hit 2m at 0.3g/t Au from 47m at Honeycomb.

ALB noted that while no high-grade intersections had been made at these prospects so far, the intersections confirmed that gold was present as the broad zones of lower grade mineralisation may represent the peripheral edges of larger, higher grade systems in some cases.

It added that only a very small portion of the Ives Granite, which extends for 4.5 km by 750m, had been tested by drilling to date, leaving numerous targets such as Duck and Duckling – where previous shallow drilling returned assays such as 4m at 7.5g/t Au and 6m at 5.7g/t respectively – to be tested.

Silver credits

ALB said multi-element assays of four previously assayed holes at Collavilla were carried out to evaluate whether significant silver and base metal mineralisation occured in association with gold, which could enhance the economic potential of any future resource, and to fingerprint pathfinder metals through the geochemistry.

The results confirm the presence of significant silver and lead-zinc mineralisation associated with gold, with the peak single metre assay intervals up to 105 g/t Ag, 0.5% Pb and 0.9% Zn.

Notably, the results – particularly significant grades of silver – support the extremely high-value mineralisation at Collavilla.

Elevated copper (up to 0.22%), bismuth (up to 15 ppm) and tellurium (up to 70.8 ppm) are characteristic geochemical signatures that can be associated with intrusive-related systems.

More from ALB: Albion’s sale of Mongers Lake to Capricorn to boost Yandal West gold hunt

Next steps

Assays are pending for 12 holes totalling about 1400m that tested the Collavilla, Barwidgee and May Queen prospects.

The company has also started a gravity survey at May Queen to map highly prospective intrusions and structures that cross cut the primarily mafic lithologies of the area.

This will be followed by a gradient array induced polarisation survey to cover the central portion of the prospect area where all significant previous intersections are located.

ALB believes this survey will map accumulations of disseminated sulphide in the area to assist and guide future drilling efforts.

Assays are also pending for a soil sampling program carried out to extend the soil coverage to the northern area of Ives Find where gravity anomalies were previously highlighted.

Granite sampling is underway across the Ives Granite in order to do a full suite of metal assays and conduct fertility analysis to vector into the most highly prospective areas of the large 4.5km long intrusive while planning for a third phase of drilling is underway.

This article was developed in collaboration with Albion Resources, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.