Thomson clocks ‘outstanding’ intersections at Webbs silver-base metal deposit in final New England Fold Belt MRE

A mineral resource estimate for Thomson Resources’ Webbs silver-base metal deposit is well underway, representing the fifth and last of the New England Fold Belt MREs that Thomson will deliver to complete the restatement of its resource base.

New 3D geological model from surface mapping and relogging of historic drilling has delivered a new geological understanding of the deposit with potential to improve resource model confidence and guide further resource and exploration drilling at Webbs.

The high-grade silver base metal character of the Webbs deposit is compatible with the previously announced Conrad and Texas district deposits, where Thomson Resources has recently reported a combined silver equivalent Indicated and Inferred resources of 40.2 Moz silver equivalent at an average of 86 g/t silver equivalent.

Around 4,295 m of RC and DD drilling in 13 holes was completed by Silver Mines (ASX:SVL) following the 2012 MRE (between 2006 to 2013), but the Webbs resource has not been subsequently updated reflecting this additional drilling.

Thomson (ASX:TMZ) says it will leverage this extensive exploration and metallurgical database along with new geological understanding of the project to produce the Webbs MRE to JORC 2012 reporting standards.

Five MREs under 12 months

TMZ executive chairman David Williams said the Webbs deposit is the most complex of all the deposits with a lot of work required to fully understand the high-grade silver and base metal deposit.

“Having said that when the Webbs MRE is delivered, Thomson will have produced five new MREs under JORC 2012 in well under 12 months which is an outstanding outcome from the team,” he said.

“We have not just rubber stamped previous published resources, we have gone through from scratch, gone through all the available historic information, and added in new data and studies where there have been gaps.

“What we will end up with is an MRE that we will have a lot of confidence in – our better understanding of the geological setting again throws up clear target areas for exploration drilling to expand and extend the resource.”

Drilling data and metallurgical test work

Thomson has commissioned independent Resource Geologists, AMC Consultants Pty Ltd to estimate the MRE for Webbs in accordance with the JORC 2012 reporting code, anticipated for release in Q2.

Silver and base metals intersections for newly validated historic drill hole database highlight high-grade silver and base metal component to the Webbs mineralisation, with better intersections including:

6.33m at 735 g/t silver equivalent or 566 g/t silver, 1.73% zinc, 2% lead, and 0.66% copper
6.62m at 793 g/t silver equivalent or 646 g/t silver, 2.83% zinc, 0.45% lead, and 0.38% copper
7.79m at 613 g/t silver equivalent or 474 g/t silver, 2.21% zinc, 0.50% lead, and 0.49% copper.

Existing Webbs metallurgical test work completed by CORE Resources in 2013 returned a very positive outcome with 87.3% recovery of silver and high recoveries of zinc, copper and lead to a concentrate grading an average of 3,468 g/t silver, 18.3% zinc, 10.1% lead and 3.2% copper.

This article was developed in collaboration with Thomson Resources, 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.