QMines more than doubles Mt Chalmers copper-gold project inventory

In just a short 18 months since making its ASX debut, QMines has delivered four resource estimates, propelling the inventory for its flagship Mt Chalmers copper-gold project to nearly 12 million tonnes.

QMines’ (ASX:QML) has delivered a third resource upgrade for its Mt Chalmers deposit along with a maiden resource for the Woods Shaft deposit, which has boosted the total resource tonnes for the Mt Chalmers project in Queensland by 104% to 11.86 million tonnes at 1.22% copper equivalent.

These additional resource estimates come just a year and a half after QMines lit up the ASX boards, with the company fast tracking exploration and resource growth after buying its own drill rig.

This gave QMines the advantage of being able to achieve a 160% increase in metres drilled in 2022 compared to 2021 and at significantly lower cost.

“We are extremely pleased to have delivered our third and fourth resources at the Mt Chalmers project in just 18 months since listing,” executive chairman Andrew Sparke told investors today.

“This achievement demonstrates the quality of the Mt Chalmers project, the motivation of our team and the projects development potential.”

Notably, as much as 84% of the total resource is now in the higher confidence measured and indicated categories. The latest resource estimates include a 119% increase in the measured and indicated categories, which now host 10 million tonnes.

Contained copper, meanwhile, increased 44% to 144,700 tonnes copper equivalent.

But QMines is far from done, with its +30,000m drilling program continuing unabated and a fifth resource upgrade on the horizon for the first half of 2023.

The company has so far completed 15,323m of drilling since listing in May 2021.

Demonstrating the exploration upside, QMines has defined three exploration targets totalling between 4.8 million tonnes and 6.8 million tonnes and four large copper and zinc soil anomalies. That’s seven potential regional repeats of Mt Chalmers.

The Woods Shaft prospect is situated less than a kilometre to the southwest of the main Mt Chalmers deposit and has been defined by previous explorers.

The deposit is currently over 250m in strike length and up to 40m wide, with mineralisation extending from surface to a depth of 90m in places and containing gold and base metal mineralisation.

QMines says the deposit appears similar to Mt Chalmers.

Mt Chalmers was mined sporadically between 1898 and 1982, producing 1.24 million tonnes at 2% copper, 3.6 grams per tonne (g/t) gold and 19g/t silver.

The brownfields volcanic-hosted massive sulphide (VHMS) project is located in the same region as significant mines including Heritage Minerals Mount Morgan’s historic mine, which produced over 8 million oz of gold and 400,000 tonnes of copper, and Aeris Resources’ (ASX:AIS) Cracow gold mine, which has produced 1.4 million oz of high-margin gold since 2004.

Also located in the region is Evolution Mining’s (ASX:EVN) Mt Rawdon mine, which has produced nearly 2 million oz of gold since it started production in 2001.

VHMS systems typically occur in clusters which is exactly what QMines is seeing at Mt Chalmers.

Mt Chalmers – which contains copper, gold, zinc, lead and silver mineralisation – is recognised as being one of the highest-grade gold VHMS mineral systems in the world.

“With drilling continuing and our team already working towards our fifth resource update, we look forward to continuing to deliver shareholder value as we seek to supply a green copper product that supports the global energy transition,” Sparke said.

This article was developed in collaboration with QMines, 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.