Alta strikes high-grade zinc, lead and silver at Pian Bracca within advanced Gorno project
Latest highlights from drilling at Alta Zinc’s Gorno project were 12.1m at 15.1% zinc, 4.3% lead and 60g/t silver from 59.5m.
Multi-commodity explorer Alta Zinc (ASX: AZI) has struck high-grade zinc, lead and silver within the Pian Bracca target of its wholly-owned Gorno project in Italy’s north.
Latest assays from the 30-hole-plus drilling campaign targeting Pian Bracca have returned 12.1m at 15.1% zinc, 4.3% lead and 60 grams per tonne silver from 59.5m.
Other highlight results were 12m at 9.5% zinc, 2.6% lead and 38g/t gold from 56.9m, and 10.7m at 11.8% zinc, 3% lead and 52g/t silver from 58m.
Alta managing director Geraint Harris said the results validate the company’s conviction that Pian Bracca is a high priority target.
He added the thick and high-grade mineralisation uncovered at Pian Bracca demonstrates the Gorno project has additional exploration upside to the known historical mineralised zones.
As well as the highlight assays previously mentioned, drilling at the prospect also demonstrated the continuity of a second layer of mineralisation below Pian Bracca.
Drilling at this new zone returned 8.5m at 17% zinc, 2% lead and 19g/t silver from 23.4m.
“This is especially exciting when one considers the great lateral extent of mineral prospectivity in the district as evidenced by prior mining,” Mr Harris said.
Drilling at Gorno is expected to continue until the end of the June quarter.
The company plans to ship the next batch of core for analysis early next month with assays anticipated a few weeks later.
Alta kicked-off drilling at Pian Bracca in November last year after channel sampling during the September quarter extracted up to 47.8% zinc and 10.5% lead.
Gorno zinc-lead-silver project
Historical mining occurred at Gorno between 1883 and 1980, with about 800,000t of zinc extracted from the project.
Alta has an existing JORC resource of 3.3Mt at 4.9% zinc, 1.3% lead and 27.2g/t silver for 163,000t of contained zinc, 43,000t lead and 2.9Moz silver.
The company has plans to fast-track Gorno into production with existing underground mine access and infrastructure in place.
A mining licence renewal application has been submitted and Alta is gearing up to undertake a definitive feasibility study and construction in 2021.
Shares in Alta had risen 10% to $0.011 by mid-morning trade.