Special Report: Auroch has turned its attention back to South Australia with the start of soil and surface rock chip sampling at its Arden copper and zinc project.

Arden covers 1,664sqkm in the base metal mining region of South Australia that also hosts the Beltana zinc deposit, the Angas zinc deposit and the Kanmantoo copper deposit.

The program will be carried out over prospective copper trends identified by an aeromagnetic survey that was flown by Auroch Minerals (ASX:AOU) in June 2018.

Auroch’s previous rock chip sampling at the southern end of the trend had returned up to 20.4 per cent copper.

Managing director Aidan Platel says the company is encouraged by the success of Taruga Minerals (ASX:TAR) in defining several high-grade copper trends on their neighbouring tenure earlier this year.

Taruga had defined high-grade copper in soils and surface rock chip samples over a prospective 15km trend.

“We have reviewed our high-resolution aeromagnetic data and can see those same structures extending south into our tenement and down to the Mt Arden region, where we know from our earlier sampling programs there is high-grade copper outcropping at surface,” Platel added.

“There is great potential for this sampling program to define a significant strike length of high-grade copper at surface at Arden, and we have already identified further potential copper-rich areas within our tenure that will be covered with surface-sampling programs following this initial program.”

Auroch minerals sampling Arden copper
Auroch’s planned surface sampling program at Arden Pic: Supplied

Copper exploration

Auroch’s sampling program has commenced at the Lady Margo prospect where ferruginised limestones and ironstone gossans were observed during field mapping.

Once this is completed, it will then move on to other areas of the Arden tenure that have been identified as being prospective for copper.

This includes the trend to the northeast of the Kanyaka prospect where surface rock chips taken in 2018 returned results of up to 12.4 per cent copper.

The company added the program will extend previous rock chip sampling along the magnetic trend to the north towards Taruga’s tenement.

 

This article was developed in collaboration with Auroch Minerals, 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.