QMines is putting its foot on the gas at its flagship high-grade Mt Chalmers copper-gold project in Queensland with further drilling delivering new mineralisation outside the existing resource. 

Mt Chalmers – which contains copper, gold, zinc, lead and silver mineralisation – is already recognised as being one of the highest-grade gold volcanic-hosted massive sulphide (VHMS) systems in the world.

Now it is on track to host a potentially much bigger resource after drilling by QMines (ASX:QML) uncovered new mineralisation outside of the current inferred resource of 3.9 million tonnes at 1.15% copper, 0.81 grams per tonne (g/t) gold and 8.4g/t silver. 

“The discovery of this new mineralisation in several holes drilled outside the current resource envelope bodes well for a resource upgrade in the fourth quarter,” executive chairman Andrew Sparke told Stockhead.

“The current drilling forms part of a large drilling program of approximately 30,000m. We’re encouraged by what we are seeing, so we’ve decided to accelerate our exploration program with a second rig on site.”

Since hitting the ASX boards in May, QMines has made several game-changing advances at its Mt Chalmers project.

Just last month, the company announced a new bonanza lead and zinc discovery, with maiden diamond drilling delivering up to 16.8% zinc and 8.3% lead along with high-grade copper, gold and silver.

And more recently QMines completed a six-month program of digitising a large historic regional soil sample dataset, which proved extremely successful and indicated it could have several big repeats of the previously operating, high-grade Mt Chalmers mine.

This treasure trove of historic data also saved QMines significant time and expense.

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

No mining has been undertaken since 1982, but there’s still plenty of exploration upside.

Mt Chalmers is located in the same region as significant mines including Heritage Minerals Mount Morgan’s historic mine, which produced over 8 million ounces of gold and 400,000 tonnes of copper, Aeris Resources’ (ASX:AIS) Cracow gold mine, which has produced 1.4 million ounces of high-margin gold since 2004, and Evolution Mining’s (ASX:EVN) Mt Rawdon mine, which has produced nearly 2 million ounces of gold since it started production in 2001.

In addition to the resource upgrade planned for Q4, QMines will also undertake a Heli-EM survey to pinpoint new drill targets.

Assays from the recent reverse circulation drilling are expected shortly.

 

 

 

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.

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