AuKing Mining reports multiple cobalt intersections at flagship Koongie Park project
AuKing Mining is seeking to raise at least $6 million to fund earn-in and exploration commitments at Koongie Park.
They’re now more than 12 years old, but old drill cores have turned up trumps for AuKing Mining (ASX: AKN), revealing that this historic work had multiple cobalt intersections.
The company says these new assay results from historic dill cores are consistent with the cobalt mineralisation reported for the Sandiego prospect at Koongie Park.
AuKing adds that the results also confirm the potential for a cobalt resource that is “very complementary” to the existing copper-zinc-silver mineralisation there.
The company is focused on two two primary copper-zinc deposits at its Koongie Park project in Western Australia, Onedin and Sandiego.
The project area is located near Halls Creek in the East Kimberley region.
Cobalt will be focus at Sandiego
The highlights of results released by the company include 60m at 1.79% copper, 5.96% zinc, 58 grams per tonne silver and 0.1% cobalt.
Another hole returned, over a 21m intersection, 2.55% copper, 0.18% zinc, 17g/t silver and 0.13% cobalt, while a 18.4m intersection hit 6.22% copper, 1.02% zinc, 8g/t silver and 0.7% cobalt.
“These results ensure that the extent of cobalt mineralisation at Sandiego will be the continued focus of exploration activities,” the company said.
Chief executive officer Paul Williams added that the identification of further significant cobalt intersections from previous drilling at Koongie Park provides AuKing with confirmation of a reasonably broad occurrence of cobalt mineralisation across the deposit.
“The presence of these levels of cobalt mineralisation establishes Koongie Park as a potential contributor to the Australian ‘battery metals’ project.”
Cobalt not yet factored into resource estimate
The existing Koongie Park mineral resource estimate sits at 8.91 million tonnes at 1.01% copper, 3.67% zinc, 0.77% lead, 0.16g/t gold and 26g/t silver.
Mr Williams stressed that this resource estimate does not include the discovered cobalt mineralisation.
“A focus of future drilling and geological modelling will be to capture cobalt in future resource estimates,” he added.
AuKing Resources is earning a controlling stake in Koongie Park from Anglo Australian Resources (ASX: AAR).
It is due to pay $3 million next month to Anglo Australian, followed in June by 1.5 million new AuKing shares, and then another $1.5 million in cash by October.