Zenith is accelerating gold and base metals exploration

Special Report: Buoyed by its exploration successes in 2020, Zenith is ramping up exploration activity at its three wholly-owned core projects.

Exploration will focus on the Red Mountain gold, Split Rocks gold and Develin Creek base metals projects with the company noting that on-site project activity is already well underway.

Zenith Minerals (ASX:ZNC) is planning to carry out more than 1,500m of diamond drilling, 5,000m of reverse circulation drilling, 6,000m of aircore drilling and over 5,000m as follow-on activity, most of which will occur in the first half of 2021.

Recently, the company reported the intersection of visible gold at Red Mountain, extending the high-grade gold zone to a depth of 180m.

Gold mineralisation remains open at depth with the company saying that it has tapped the upper levels of a breccia pipe system similar to the 1.2Moz Mt Wright gold mine.

Diamond drilling is planned to resume in mid-February with a further phase of four to eight holes planned in and around the visible gold intersections.

Split Rocks

At Split Rocks, the Company has defined several areas that require additional work programs.

The most advanced of these is the Dulcie Laterite Pit that is now interpreted to be a shear zone of over 2kmGold zones appear to be locally stacked and are open to the east as well as downdip to the west.

Zenith plans to drill an initial 21 RC holes to test targets predominantly outside the Dulcie Laterite Pit target along with holes at the pit to expand on what has already been defined.

It will also test the high-grade target areas of Dulcie North and Far North with a combination of RC and aircore holes.

Additionally, a high-level metallurgical gold extraction test work program will be carried out by ALS Laboratories with the goal of defining a commercial scale inventory.

Develin Creek

Develin Creek already has an Inferred Resource of 2.57Mt grading 1.76 per cent copper, 2.01 per cent zinc, 0.24g/t gold and 9.6g/t silver.

Drilling completed at the southern end of the property in the latter part of 2020 at the new greenfields Snook copper prospect returned encouraging first pass results including 3m at 1.6 per cent copper, 1.1 per cent zinc, 43g/t silver and 0.2g/t gold.

Zenith has also just completed a detailed geological and structural mapping of the surrounding 2km by 3km area, which has given it a better understanding of the immediate geology.

Snook remains open with the company planning to complete an aeromagnetic geophysical survey over the same area to assist with drill targeting.

Other work at Snook includes a re-evaluation and review of historical electromagnetic data, systematic regional soil sampling and follow-up drilling to commence in March or April.

This article was developed in collaboration with Zenith Minerals, 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.