Copper and gold potential uncovered at Freehill Mining’s Yerbas Buenas iron ore project
An IP survey at Freehill Mining’s Yerbas Buenas project has identified a possible copper and gold structure.
Freehill Mining (ASX: FHS) has identified potential copper and gold mineralisation after carrying out an induced polarisation (IP) survey across its flagship Yerbas Buenas project in Chile.
The region hosts numerous artisanal copper and gold workings and Freehill’s IP survey at Yerbas Buenas targeted potential sources of copper mineralisation.
“The completion of the IP survey is a significant step forward in verifying the presence of what we believe is a large sulphide structure that may host the copper and gold mineralisation typically found at surface in the area,” Freehill chief executive officer Peter Hinner said.
After reviewing survey data, Freehill’s team identified “moderately strong chargeability anomalies” in the project’s north.
According to the company, the shallow section of the anomaly is located near a ravine where it is believed the chargeable material maybe found near surface.
Additionally, high resistivities are associated with both the chargeability anomaly in the north-east part of the grid and with most of the strong anomalies in the northern portion.
“A significant break in resistivities immediately west of the major magnetic anomalies is indicative of a major structure or contact,” the company stated.
Mr Hinner said Freehill is currently planning a drilling program to begin in the June quarter to test the sulphide structure.
“Discovering this large IP anomaly so close to other copper and gold mineralisation is a great development and substantially improves the project’s potential for gold and copper mineralisation,” he added.
Yerbas Buenas
The discovery of copper and gold potential at Yerbas Buenas boosts the project’s known prospectivity, with the initial focus at the project being high-grade iron ore mineralisation.
Trial mining at Yerbas Buenas has been underway mid-2017, with ore sold to Compania Minera Del Pacifico, which owns a nearby pellet feed plant.
A drilling campaign was carried out at Yerbas Buenas to firm up an iron ore resource at the project. Assays are imminent but preliminary Davis Tube separator and XRF analysis on a sample delivered to Compania Minera Del Pacifico returned 69.43% iron.
Drilling also revealed 170m of “effectively continuously high-grade material”, which was struck below only 15m of sand cover.
“Yerbas Buenas is shaping up as a significant Chilean magnetite project with established offtake agreements and third-party processing options available to us only 30km from site,” Mr Hinner said.
“We look forward to updating shareholders with results from the recent drill campaign and geophysics survey,” he added.