Magmatic Resources Ltd (ASX:MAG) has kicked off more focused diamond drilling at its 100%-owned Myall Project, some 60 kilometres north along strike of the Northparkes Mine owned by China Molybdenum/Sumitomo.
Rapid expansion of resource
The current phase of exploration has the potential to rapidly expand the significant metal endowment already defined at Myall, which includes 354,000 tonnes of copper equivalent metal.
The drilling concentrates on six key targets in the greater Corvette and Kingswood prospect areas.
Initial drilling will focus on shallow mineralisation immediately below the transported cover in areas to the south and southwest of Corvette, before sequentially progressing to targets to the west, northwest and north.
A diamond drilling rig was mobilised to the project yesterday with the task of drilling between eight and 10 holes at an average depth of 250 metres over the coming 4-6 weeks.
Processing conducted in tandem
The company will begin processing and cutting the diamond core almost immediately, with samples to be submitted for analysis as drilling progresses.
The campaign will be testing areas outside of the footprint of the initial mineral resource estimate (MRE) for the Corvette and Kingswood deposits, comprising 110 million tonnes at 0.33% copper equivalent.
The Northparkes porphyry copper-gold deposits have a current combined resource and reserve base of 607 million tonnes at 0.55% copper and 0.21 g/t gold, and Magmatic intends to target similar style mineralisation and grades.
More than 11,000 metres of diamond drilling has recently been completed at Myall by the company, culminating in the initial inferred MRE for the Corvette and Kingswood deposits.
Much larger area
The latest exploration program has the potential to expand the significant metal endowment already defined at Myall, which includes 293,000 tonnes of copper, 237,000 ounces of gold and 2.8 million ounces of silver, equating to 354,000 tonnes of copper metal equivalent.
While Corvette and Kingswood have a significant footprint in their own right, they form a small part of a much larger area of basement copper anomalism that extends to nearly three kilometres in length and more than one kilometre in width.