American West Metals says there’s “outstanding upside” to further define near-surface high-grade copper deposits at its Storm Project in Canada – with the potential for a large-scale, low-footprint, direct shipping ore (DSO) style operation.

Diamond drilling continues to define near-surface high-grade copper at Storm, more than doubling the mineralised envelope and substantially enhancing the resource potential.

Notable intersections include:

  • 19m at 2.08% copper from 58m downhole, including 2m at 15.98% copper from 70m downhole (ST22-06);
  • 10m at 2.36% copper from 53m downhole, and 7m at 1.08% copper from 79m downhole (ST22-04);
  • 2m at 1.81% copper from 36m downhole, 7m at 1.00% copper from 40m downhole, and; 1m at 5.75% copper from 13m downhole (ST22-07).

American West Metals (ASX:AW1) is confident there’s potential to further define near-surface high-grade copper deposits with the drilling of the extensive 2200N and 4100N Zones where multiple intersections of massive copper sulphides have been discovered by historical drilling.

 

Outstanding upside at 2750N Zone

“Our first drill program at Storm has been a huge success,” MD Dave O’Neill says.

“In a relatively short program, we have intersected extremely high-grade copper near-surface and likely doubled the volume of mineralisation at the 2750N Zone, and discovered a potential large, new sedimentary copper system below the near- surface mineralisation.”

Also encouraging, a high volume of near-surface high-grade copper at the 2750N Zone has now been confirmed with mineralisation open to the west along a 1km prospective strike length, which O’Neill says highlights the potential for significant near- surface resources of copper with “outstanding upside.”

“Strong copper intersections to the west indicate that the zone is open and highly prospective in that direction,” he said.

“Outcropping mineralisation with up to 62% copper and surface geochemistry supports our assumptions that the zone has the potential to extend for over 1km to the west.”

 

Directing shipping ore with large scale resource potential

“The next drill program at Storm will look to define further resources at the 2750N Zone, and to evaluate the economic potential of other highly prospective near surface occurrences of high-grade copper such as the 2200N and 4100N Zones,” O’Neill said.

The addition of further copper from these other high-grade zones will add significant scale to any mining proposal at Storm, and further value to any DSO type operation.

“We are excited about the commencement of the next phase of beneficiation test work, designed to confirm the commercial potential of the high-grade Storm copper.”

Drill core samples from the 2022 program are now being shipped to Perth for further beneficiation test work, to follow-up the initial test work that produced a DSO product with a grade >53% copper – with the company planning to define a definitive flowsheet for a potential DSO mining operation.

 

This article was developed in collaboration with American West Metals Limited, 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.

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