Copper Search launches major drilling initiative at Peake project in South Australia’s Gawler Craton

Copper Search (ASX: CUS) has commenced the hunt for new district-scale copper opportunities, with the winter 2024 drilling program underway at its Peake project in South Australia.

Backed by a recent capital raising, Copper Search has started a two-hole diamond core program at the Peake project, located in the prolific Gawler Craton.

The program is expected to take six weeks to complete.

Quality prospects

Chief executive officer and exploration manager Duncan Chessell said the drilling will target copper-gold deposits of similar scale potential to Prominent Hill and Carrapateena.

“I am delighted that drilling has commenced to test these quality large-scale copper prospects that could add significant shareholder value,” he remarked.

“The compelling drill targets have been developed from $2 million worth of geophysics data acquisition, $4m of drill testing and iterative refining of the exploration model by our highly credentialed technical team from an original 40 geophysical anomalies over the last three years.”

Mr Chessell recently noted in a video presentation that Copper Search had made a significant investment in technical know-how to define the two prospects, both of which are located north of Olympic Dam, Prominent Hill and Carrapateena, highlighting the Peake project’s potential to uncover a major deposit.

New IOCG play

The Peake project is situated in the underexplored NE Gawler Craton area of SA considered prospective for large-scale iron oxide copper-gold (IOCG) deposits.

Proof of concept of the Peake project’s copper potential was demonstrated in 2022 with confirmed Cloncurry-style IOCG alteration and mineralisation previously intersected in drilling on the neighbouring Wills and Mawson prospects funded by Oz Minerals.

Significantly, the Wills prospect is on the same structural corridor as several Copper Search targets.

Paradise Dam program

The Peake drilling program has kicked off at the Paradise Dam prospect with a planned depth of 600 metres.

Drilling at Paradise Dam is testing a 3km-long prospect defined by a strong chargeability anomaly of up to 50 millivolts per volt strength.

The rig will then move to test a large-scale, shallow, classic IOCG-coincident “magnetics and gravity” anomaly at the Douglas Creek prospect.

Successful raising

Copper Search successfully received commitments to raise $2m through a share placement at the end of May, with directors subscribing for $130,000 worth of shares.

Along with the Peake drilling, the funds will be channelled into assessing the gold prospectivity of the company’s Mt Denison claim.

That work includes an early-stage geochemical sampling program.