Thomson preps Mt Gunyan silver-gold resource as momentum builds across Texas project

Thomson Resources says it is set to deliver a highly anticipated maiden resource estimate at its Mt Gunyan project across the New England Fold Belt silver, gold and base metals hub.

It is the third straight project in the district to head into the resource estimation phase after the Twin Hills and Silver Spur silver deposits, and a key component of the Thomson Resources (ASX:TMZ) hub and spoke processing model.

The company’s resource work will be backed by high-quality historic drill data, using silver-gold intersections at 25g/t and 50g/t silver cut-offs from 20,000m of drilling across 299 holes.

Some of those intersections are extremely high in grade and have large proportions of silver and gold.

They include:

1 m at 300.0 g/t Ag and 43.2 g/t Au from 152m (300 Ag grams per metre, 25 g/t Ag cut off) (MGD001)
34 m at 318.7 g/t Ag and 0.08 g/t Au from 62 m (10,836 Ag g*m, 25 g/t Ag cut off) (MGRC005)
Including 24 m at 433.0 g/t Ag and 0.10 g/t Au from 62 m (10,392 Ag g*m, 50 g/t Ag cut off); and,
18 m at 168.3 g/t Ag and 0.35 g/t Au from 72 m (3,030 Ag g*m, 25 g/t Ag cut off)
Including 6 m at 446.0 g/t Ag and 0.66 g/t Au from 78 m (2,680 Ag g*m, 50 g/t Ag cut off).

New met test work is also advanced on potential grinding, flotation and leaching processing pathways, seeking an improvement on the heap leach model used by previous operators that only generated recoveries in the ~60% range.

Robust in New England

Executive chairman David Williams said the explorer has a more robust picture of what its New England Fold Belt Spoke and Hub project looks like after working through 56,000m of drilling over the 3 deposits at Texas, which has delivered 4.2Moz of historic silver along with high grade zinc, copper and lead mineralisation in the past.

“An enormous amount of work has been done by our geoscience team who have painstakingly been working through the huge amount of historic information,” he said.

“We now have a much clearer and more robust picture of the Mt Gunyan deposit to go along with the same for Twin Hills and Silver Spur.

“The understanding of what is there at each of the deposits and the work we are doing on metallurgy are fundamental steps in our centralised processing strategy. This cannot be rushed.

“We are now starting to see the fruits of our labour which has required a patient and thorough approach. The picture will become clearer as the MRE’s are published along with the metallurgical studies.

“We will then have a very good understanding of what we have and the pathway forward. Whilst it might appear to have taken a long time, in actual fact we have, with the massive effort from our team, actually achieved a huge amount in a very short period.”

Base metals potential

Just 45% of the core samples from Mt Gunyan were tested for zinc, lead and copper, meaning there is a huge amount of untapped potential in the form of its possible base metals endowment.

Currently the resource estimate will focus on the primary silver and gold content, with Thomson to revisit the base metals grades and metallurgical recovery of Mt Gunyan’s base metals potential at a later date.

Mt Gunyan is shaping as an open pit style deposit with bulk mining potential with two lozenge shaped silver-gold orebodies of 230m long by 120m and 250m long by up to 100m wide.

Unlike the Twin Hills and Silver Spur sulphide deposits, most of Mt Gunyan is strong-to-partially oxidised up to 190m below surface where oxidation has exploited the vein zones to penetrate at depth.

Metallurgical test work will run through some 87 met samples including 105kg of transitional oxidised and oxide material from historic drill cores.

Thomson is seeking out a metallurgical process to support its idea of building scale by combining the New England Fold Belt projects into a single project with a central processing hub.

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.