Base Metals: Stavely hits more shallow, high-grade copper in Victoria

Stavely Minerals (ASX:SVY) has extended shallow, high-grade copper mineralisation at the Thursday’s Gossan prospect within its self-named copper-gold project in Victoria after drilling returned some standout results.

The top hit from the drill program returned 11m at 4.62 per cent copper, 0.57 grams per tonne (g/t) gold and 25g/t silver from a depth of 86m about 40m north of the discovery hole.

This included a higher grade zone of 3m at 10.87 per cent copper, 0.67g/t gold and 52g/t silver from 92m along, with an overlapping interval of nickel mineralisation of 5m at 1.42 per cent nickel and 0.05 per cent cobalt from 96m.

Another hole drilled to test mineralisation below the discovery hole did not reach its target depth due to the drill rods breaking.

However, it still intersected a 3m zone at 1.68 per cent copper, 0.18g/t gold and 8g/t silver from a depth of 79m and a deeper 8.3m intersection grading 1.65 per cent copper, 0.23g/t gold and 7.2g/t silver from 157m.

“We are pleased that ongoing drilling continues to intersect well-developed, high-grade copper-gold-silver mineralisation with the added bonus of some quite unusual nickel-cobalt mineralisation,” executive chairman Chris Cairns said.

“Follow-up drilling in the coming weeks will give us a much clearer picture of what is going on at depth and where the broader potential of this discovery may lie.”

The company is bringing two further large capacity drill rigs to accelerate infill and extensional drilling of the UCF target and test other similar regional targets.

Now read:
Stavely follows up that game-changing copper discovery, sniffs out more high grade hits

Further to the north, DevEx Resources (ASX:DEV) has had an encouraging start to its maiden drilling program at the Bogong copper-gold project in New South Wales’ highly-prospective Lachlan Fold Belt.

Assays from the top half of its first diamond hole returned a 12.6m intersection grading 1.24 per copper from a depth of 25.5m that included a higher grade zone of 3.9m at 2 per cent copper.

Drilling of the remaining holes in the program of up to seven holes is ongoing with the company looking to complete work by the middle of December.

The company considers Bogong, which surrounds the historical Bogong copper mine, to be largely untested for economic deposits of copper and gold mineralisation.

In other ASX base metals news today:

Cyprium Metals (ASX:CYM) has successfully produced copper during metallurgical test work of samples sourced from the Hollandaire prospect at the Cue project in Western Australia.

Meanwhile, Castillo Copper (ASX:CCZ) has raised $1.8m through a private placement of shares to strategic institutional investors in Australia, Asia and New Zealand. Proceeds will be used to develop its projects in Australia and Zambia.