AuKing Mining gears up for next round of drilling at flagship Koongie Park project

AuKing Mining’s (ASX: AKN) is gearing up for another round of reverse circulation drilling at its flagship Koongie Park polymetallic project in Western Australia’s east Kimberley.

Drilling will comprise 7,500m and take between six and eight weeks to complete and cost about $1.5 million.

AuKing noted it would reveal preliminary portable XRF results from the program along with assays as they are received.

This program will cover strong conductive anomalies that are offset from known mineralised areas at Onedin and Sandiego.

The targets were identified from down hole geophysics (DHEM) surveys completed earlier this year.

Main areas to be drilled include the Onedin and Sandiego DHEM extensions, Onedin South, Emull, the Sandiego 700m water bore target and a magnetic anomaly identified last year.

Advancing Koongie Park project

Koongie Park is prospective for numerous metals including copper, zinc, lead, silver, gold and molybdenum.

Cobalt has also been identified in historical drill core at Sandiego, and AuKing recently locked-in the rights to any platinum group elements found at the project.

This was done after Pantoro (ASX: PNR) generated “outstanding” results at its nearby Lamboo project.

Koongie Park has a current resource of 8.9 million tonnes at 1.01% copper, 3.67% zinc, 0.16 grams per tonne gold, 32g/t silver and 0.77% lead.

Assays from previous drilling has returned notable intercepts of 105.3m at 1.94% copper, 0.76% zinc, 0.7% lead, 55g/t silver and 106 parts per million molybdenum from 46m, including 16.6m at 10.2% copper, 1.03% zinc, 0.46% lead, and 316g/t silver; and 66m at 1.67% copper, 17.57% zinc, 4.03% lead, 95g/t silver, 0.36g/t gold and 1,718ppm molybdenum from 74.4m, including 8.7m at 3.28% copper, 22.71% zinc, 8.01% lead, 190g/t silver and 3,776ppm molybdenum.

Recent metallurgical test work on ore samples from the Onedin deposit generated preliminary copper and zinc recovery rates exceeding 75%.

Further test work is underway, which is looking at a combination of pre-treatment reductants, time which treatments are applied and the operational conditions.

Results from this test work are expected imminently.

AuKing’s strategy is to develop an optimal recovery process then undertake larger-scale tests on its extensive drill core inventory.