‘Golden footprint’ unlocks huge upside for Matador at Cape Ray project

The Cape Ray Project in Newfoundland boasts an open-pittable mineral resource of 840,000 ounces — 96% of which sits within 200m of surface — in a Tier 1 gold jurisdiction.

It’s just the beginning.

Matador Mining (ASX:MZZ) has the largest continuous landholding along the underexplored Cape Ray shear zone, where recent exploration has shown huge potential to significantly grow those ounces.

Caption: Matador’s tenure covers 120km of continuous strike along the highly prospective, yet largely under-explored Cape Ray Shear in Newfoundland, Canada.

Historical ‘basement’ sampling and diamond drilling at Cape Ray has only targeted outcropping mineralisation, which accounts for less than 10% of the project area.

The rest of the potential targets are under a thin 0.5 to 5m layer of cover called ‘till’.

Unlike places like WA, where soil sampling can often be done at surface, Matador must sample underneath this till to dial in on potential drilling targets.

“Systematic sampling of basement rocks beneath shallow till cover (generally less than 5 metres deep) has not occurred at the project,” Matador exploration manager Warren Potma says.

“Our 2020 exploration program demonstrated that hydrothermal gold mineralisation appears to be associated with a large suite of pathfinder elements with predictable zonation up to 100 metres away from gold mineralisation.

“Defining these mineralisation footprints increases the probability of determining the direction to gold mineralisation from broad spaced basement sampling, particularly for those targets under till cover.”

Understanding pathfinder elements is a key tool the company will use to unlock the multimillion ounce potential of this project.

These ‘footprints’ materially improve Matador’s ability to explore under the shallow glacial till cover by identifying anomalism associated with “near-misses” in basement samples and providing vectors to gold mineralisation.

Drill beneath the till

Matador will accelerate a geochemical sampling program through 2021 by using small, purpose-built ATV mounted drills designed to enhance the efficiency, speed, and depth of drilling.

Drilling will commence on multiple untested priority targets within 15km of the proposed central processing facility at Central Zone.

“Matador’s new purpose-built ATV-mounted Winkie Drills, constructed in collaboration with our drilling partner (Major’s Contracting Ltd) will allow for rapid, inexpensive, effective and systematic first-pass sampling of high ranked greenfields targets for the first time in the region,” Potma says.

“We believe this will result in a step-change in exploration productivity and effectiveness through cover with the additional benefit of increasing our diamond drilling hit-rate and reducing the discovery timelines and costs.

“We have five high-priority structural target areas under shallow till cover within five kilometres of the Central Zone Mineral Resources that have never been drill tested, and at least 27 more targets identified along the 120km strike length of the project.

“With the commissioning of the new Winkie Drills in progress, we now have a rapid, cost effective method of pinpointing the ‘sweet spot’ within each target area for follow-up diamond drilling, as well as confidently ruling out those targets not worthy of more expensive diamond drilling.”

This article was developed in collaboration with Matador Mining, 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.